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VICTORIAN
POETS.
VICTORI
AN
POETS
BY
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
AUTHOR OF " POBTS OP AMERCA M
THIRTEENTH EDITION.
vi
vii
viii
ix
E. C. S.
TO
GEORGE RIPLEY, LL.D.,
WHOSE JUDGMENT, LEARNING, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVOTION
HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE
ADVANCEMENT OF CRITICISM,
AND FURNISHED AN ENVIABLE EXAMPLE TO MEN
OF LETTERS,
Sh,t* Volume i* Itwcribeb.
tory HE
chapter,
contents
but I will
of prefix
this volume
a brief statement
chiefly relate
of itstoscope,
the
announced at the beginning of the introducand of the principles that underlie its judgment.
Although presented as a book of literary and biograph
ical criticism, it also may be termed an historical review
of the course of British poetry during the present reign,
if not a minute, at least a compact and logical, survey of
the authors and works that mainly demand attention.
Having made a study of the poets who rank as leaders of
the recent British choir, a sense of proportion induced
me to enlarge the result, and to use it as the basis of
a guide-book to the metrical literature of the time and
country in which those poets have flourished. It seemed
to me that, by including a sketch of minor groups and
schools, and giving a connection to the whole, I might
offer a work that would have practical value for uses of
record and reference, in addition to whatever qualities, as
an essay in philosophical criticism, it should be found to
possess.
xiv
PREFACE.
To this end Chapters VII. and VIII. were written ; sidenotes have been affixed throughout the volume, and an
analytical index prepared of the whole. There is much
dispute among the best authorities with respect to literary
and biographical dates, and a few matters of this sort
remain open to doubt ; but in many instances, where the
persons concerned are still living, I have been successful in
obtaining the requisite information at first hand.
A reference to the notes and index will show what seems
to my own mind, after the completion of these essays, their
most conspicuous feature. So many and various qualities
are displayed by the poets under review that, in writing
of their works and lives, I have expressed incidentally
such ideas concerning the aim and constituents of Poetry
as I have gathered during my acquaintance with the his
toric body of English verse. Often, moreover, a leading
author affords an illustration of some special phase of the
poetic art and life. The case of Browning, for example,
at once excites discussion as to the nature of poetic expres
sion ; that of Mrs. Browning involves a study of the poetic
temperament, its joys and sorrows, its growth, ripeness,
and decline. Hood's life was that of a working man of
letters ; in Tennyson's productions we observe every aspect
of poetry as an art, and the best average representation of
the modern time ; while Landor not only affords another
study of temperament, but shows the benefits and dangers
of culture, of amateurship, and of intellectual versatility as
opposed to special gift. In Arnold we find a passion of the
PREFACE.
xv
xvi
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
xvii
xviii
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
xix
XX
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
xxi
xxii
PREFACE.
E. C. S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Pace
1
The Period
CHAPTER II.
Walter Savage Landor
33
CHAPTER III.
Thomas Hood. Matthew Arnold. Bryan Waller Procter .
72
CHAPTER IV.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
.114
CHAPTER V.
Alfred Tennyson
150
CHAPTER VI.
Tennyson and Theocritus
201
CHAPTER VII.
The General Choir
234
CHAPTER VIII.
262
xxiv
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
Robert Browning
293
CHAPTER X.
Latter-Day Singers :
Robert Buchanan. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. William
Morris
342
CHAPTER XI.
Latter-Day Singers:
Algernon Charles Swinburne
379
.415
485
VICTORIAN
POETS.
VICTORIAN
POETS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERIOD.
THE PERIOD.
poets overcome all restrictions, create their own styles,
and even may determine the lyrical character of a
period, or indicate that of one which is to succeed
them.
Among authors of less repute we therefore shall find
more than one rare and attractive poet hampered by
lack of fortune and opportunity, or by a failure to har
monize his genius with the spirit of his time. For ex
ample, several persons having the true dramatic feeling
arose, but cannot be said to have flourished, during or
just before the early portion of the era, and were over
borne by the reflective, idyllic fashion which then began
to prevail in English verse. These isolated singers
Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Horne, and others like them
never exhibited the full measure of their natural gifts.
The time was out of keeping ; and why ? Because it
followed the lead, and listened to the more courageous
voices of still greater poets, who introduced and kept in
vogue a mode of feeling and expression to which the
dramatic method is wholly antagonistic. These suc
cessful leaders, no less sensitive than their rivals to
the feeble and affected mood which poetry then had
assumed, and equally familiar with the choicest models
of every age and literature, were more wise in select
ing the ground upon which the expression of their
own genius and the tendencies of the period could be
brought together. They persisted in their art, gathered
new audiences, and fulfilled the mission for which they
were endowed with voice, imagination, and the poet's
creative desire. This surer instinct, this energy and
success, this utterance lifted above opposing voices,
are what have distinguished poets like Tennyson, the
Brownings, Rossetti, Swinburne, from less fortunate
aspirants whose memory is cherished tenderly by our
The critic's
province.
Cp. " Peels
ofA merica" : pp.
2b, 223.
Aspects of
the time un
der review.
THE PERIOD.
restrictive, their baffling effect will teach the poet to
recognize and deplore them, and to endeavor, though
with wind and tide against him, to make his progress
noble and enduring.
In regard to the province of the critic there can,
however, be no question. It is at once seen to be
twofold. He must recognize and broadly observe the
local, temporal, and generic conditions under which
poetry is composed, or fail to render adequate judg
ment upon the genius of the composer. Yet there
always are cases in which poetry fairly rises above the
idealism of its day. The philosophical critic, then, in
estimating the importance of an epoch, also must pay
full consideration to the messages that it has received
from poets of the higher rank, and must take into
account the sovereign nature of a gift so independent
and spontaneous that from ancient times men have
united in looking upon it as a form of inspiration.
As we trace the course of British poetry, from a
point somewhat earlier than the beginning of the pres
ent reign, down to the close of the third quarter of
our century, we observe that at the outset of this
period the sentiment of the Byronic school had de
generated into sentimentalism, while for its passion
there had been substituted the calm of reverie and in
trospective thought. Two kinds of verse were marked
by growing excellence. The first was that of an artschool, taking its models from old English poetry and
from the delicate classicism of Landor and Keats ; the
second was of a didactic, yet elevated nature, and had
the imaginative strain of Wordsworth for its loftiest
exemplar. We see these two combining in that idyllic
method which, upon the whole, has distinguished the
recent time, and has maintained an atmosphere un
THE PERIOD.
wise, it is suggestive rather than plain-spoken, and
greatly relies upon surrounding accessories for the
fuller conveyance of its subtle thought. After some
comparison of the laureate with the father of Greek
idyllic verse, pointing out, meanwhile, the significant
likeness between the Alexandrian and Victorian eras,
I shall give attention to a number of those minor
poets, from whose diverse yet blended rays we can
most readily derive a general estimate of the time and
its poetic tendency. These may be partially assorted
in groups depending upon specific feeling or style ;
but doubtless many single lights will be found scat
tered between such constellations, and each shining
with his separate lustre and position. Finally, in re
counting the growth of the new dramatic and ro
mantic schools, under the leadership of Browning and
Rossetti, we shall find their characteristics united in
the verse of Swinburne, in some respects the most
notable of the poets who now, in the prime of their
creative faculties, strive to maintain the historic beauty
and eminence of England's song.
Before entering upon a citation of the poets them
selves, I wish to make what reference may be needful
to the conditions of the period. Let us see wherein it
has been marked by transition, how far it has been
critical and didactic, to what extent poetical and crea
tive. A moment's reflection will convince us that it
has witnessed a change in the conditions bearing upon
art, as important and radical as those changes, more
quickly recognized, that have affected the whole tone
of social order and philosophic thought. Our rhyth
mical expression originated in phenomenal language
and imagery, an inheritance from the past ; modern
poetry has struggled painfully, even heroically, to cast
II.
It follows that, in any discussion of the recent era,
the scientific movement which has engrossed men's
thoughts, and so radically affected their spiritual and
material lives, assumes an importance equal to that of
all other forces combined. The time has been marked
by a stress of scientific iconoclasm. Its bearing upon
theology was long since perceived, and the so-called
conflict of Science with Religion is now at full height.
Its bearing upon poetry, through antagonism to the
traditional basis of poetic diction, imagery, and thought,
has been less distinctly stated. The stress has been
vaguely felt by the poets themselves, but they are not
given to formulating their sensations in the polemical
manner of those trained logicians, the churchmen,
and the attitude of the latter has so occupied our re
gard that few have paused to consider the real cause
of the technical excellence and spiritual barrenness
common in the modern arts of letters and design.
Yet it is impossible, when we once set about it, to
look over the field of late English verse, and not to
see a question of the relations between Poetry and
Science pressing for consideration at every turn and
outpost.
Scientific iconoclasm is here mentioned simply as an
existing force : not as one to be deplored, for I have
THE PERIOD.
faith that it will in the end lead to new and fairer
manifestations of the immortal Muse. However irre
pressible the conflict between accepted theologies and
the spirit of investigation, however numerous the tra
ditions of faith that yield to the advances of knowledge,
there is no such inherent antagonism between science
and poetry. In fact, the new light of truth is no more
at war with religious aspiration than with poetic feel
ing, but in either case with the ancient fables and
follies of expression which these sentiments respec
tively have cherished. A sense of this hostility has
oppressed, I say, the singers clinging to forms of
beauty, which long remain the dearest, because loved
the first. Their early instinct of resistance is manifest
in the following sonnet by a poet who saw only the
beginning of the new dispensation:
" Science ! true daughter of old Time thou art,
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ?
How should he love thee ? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star ?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree ? "
Had this youth lived to the present hour, he would
begin, I think, to discern that Poetry herself is strug
gling to be free from the old and to enter upon the
new, to cast off a weight of precedent and phenom
enal imagery and avail herself of the more profound
A temporary
conflict.
The poetic
and rational
methods ex
amined and
i. Thepoetic, orphe
nomenal
mode.
10
THE PERIOD.
footed steeds. The clouds were his pathway ; the
early morning Hour was scattering in advance flow
ers of infinite prismatic hues, and her blooming,
radiant sisters were floating in air around Apollo's
chariot ; the earth was roseate with celestial light ; the
blue sea laughed beyond. Swiftly ascending Heaven's
archway the retinue swept on ; all was real, exuberant
life and gladness ; the gods were thus in waiting upon
humanity, and men were the progeny of the gods. The
elements of the Hellenic idealism, so often cited, are
readily understood. It appeared in the blithesome
imagery of a race that felt the pulses of youth, with no
dogmas of the past to thicken its current and few ana
lytical speculations to perturb it. Youth, health, and
simplicity of life brought men to accept and inform
after their own longings the outward phenomena of
natural things. Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
I refer to the antique feeling (as I might to that of
the pastoral Hebraic age), not as to the exponent of
a period superior to our own, or comparable with it
in knowledge, comfort, grasp of all that enhances the
average of human welfare, but as that of a poetical
era, charged with what has ever, until now, made the
excellence of such times, an era when gifted poets
would find themselves in an atmosphere favoring the
production of elevated poetry, and of poetry especially
among the forms of art, since this has seemed more
independent
But there are
of aid
other
from
types
material
of thescience
poetical
than
age.the Pass
rest.
from the simple and harmonious ideals of classicism
to the romantic Gothic era, whose genius was con
glomerate of old and new, and the myths of many
ages and countries, but still fancy-free, or subject only
to a pretended science as crude and wanton as the
11
12
THE PERIOD.
sciences tends to repress self-assertion, and to make
one content with accepting quietly his little share of
life and action. In earlier eras of this kind, discov
ery and invention occupied men's minds until, fully
satiated, they longed for mental rest and a return to a
play of heart and fancy. Too much wisdom seemed
folly indeed ; dance and song and pastoral romance
resumed their sway; the harpers harped anew, and
from the truer life and knowledge scientifically gained
broke forth new blossoms of poetic art. But our own
period has no exact prototype. It is advanced in
civilization ; but the time of Pericles, though also
exhibiting a modern refinement, was one of scientific
ignorance. There was, as we have seen, a mediaeval
spirit of scientific inquiry, but almost wholly guided
by superstition. Even nature's laws were compelled
to bow to church fanaticism ; experiments were looked
upon with distrust, or conducted in secrecy ; and po
etry, at least in respect to its cherished language and
ideals, had no occasion to take alarm.
But in the nineteenth century, science, freedom of
thought, refinement, and material progress have moved
along together. The modern student often has been
so narrowed by his investigations as to be more unjust
to the poet than the latter was of old to the philoso
pher. Art has seemed mere pastime and amusement,
as once it seemed the devil's frippery and seduction
to the ascetic soul of the Puritan, aglow with the
gloomy or rapturous mysteries of his theology. Also
by the multitude whom the practical results of science
at last have thoroughly won over, and who now are
impelled by more than Roman ambition to girdle the
earth with engineering and conquer the elements them
selves, neither the songsters nor the metaphysicians,
HUXLEY ON EDUCATION.
but the physical investigators and men of action, are
held to be the world's great men. The De Lesseps,
Fields, Barings, and Vanderbilts, no less than Lyell,
Darwin, and Agassiz, wear the bay-leaves of to-day.
Religion and theology, also, are subjected to analysis
and the universal tests, and at last the divine and the
poet, traditionally at loggerheads, have a common bond
of suffering, a union of toleration or half-disguised
contempt. Eating together at the side-tables, neither is
adequately consoled by reflecting that the other is no
more to be envied than himself. The poet's hold upon
the youthful mind and sentimental popular emotion
has also measurably relaxed ; for a learned professor,
who has spoken of poetic expression as "sensual
caterwauling," and possibly regards the gratification of
the aesthetic perceptions as of little worth, grossly un
derrated his position when he said that, " at present,
education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation
of the power of expression and of the sense of literary
beauty." The truth is that our school-girls and spin
sters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and
Spencer under their arms ; or if they carry Tennyson,
Longfellow, and Morris, read them in the light of
spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of
Mill and Bain. The very tendency of modern poetry
to wreak its thoughts upon expression, of which Huxley
so complains, naturally follows the iconoclastic over
throw of its cherished ideals, confining it to skilful
utilization of the laws of form and melody. Ay, even
the poets, with their intensely sympathetic natures,
have caught the spirit of the age, and pronounce the
verdict against themselves. One of them envies his
early comrade, who forsook art to follow learning,
and thus in age addresses him :
13
THE PERIOD.
" Alike we loved
The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved
To measures of old song. How since that day
Our feet have parted from the path that lay
So fair before us ! Rich, from life-long search
Of truth, within thy Academic porch
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
Thy servitors the sciences exact ;
Still listening, with thy hand on Nature's keys,
To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
And rhythm of law
And if perchance too late I linger where
The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,
Thou, wiser in thy choice, will scarcely blame
The friend who shields his folly with thy name."
The more intellectual will confess to you that they
weary less of a new essay by Proctor or Tyndall than
of the latest admirable poem; that, overpowered in
the brilliant presence of scientific discovery, their own
conceptions seem less dazzling. A thirst for more
facts grows upon them ; they throw aside their lyres
and renew the fascinating study, forgetful that the
inspiration of Plato, Shakespeare, and other poets of
old, often foreshadowed the glory of these revelations,
and neglecting to chant in turn the transcendent pos
sibilities of eras yet to come. Science, the modern
Circe, beguiles them from their voyage to the Hesperides, and transforms them into her voiceless devotees.
Every period, however original and creative, has a
transitional aspect in its relation to the years before
and after. In scientific iconoclasm, then, we have the
most important of the symptoms which mark the recent
era as a transition period, and presently shall observe
features in the structure and composition of its po
etry which justify us in thus ranking it. The Victorian
16
THE PERIOD.
appearances, we can use this meaning for the lan
guage and basis of poetical works ; but recent poets
have had to contend with the fact that, while men
are instructed out of the early phenomenal faith, their
recognition of scientific truth has not yet become that
second nature which can replace it. The poet of to
day, burdened with his new wisdom, represents the
contemporary treatment when he says,
" There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun,
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound " ;
but it is by a prosaic effort that he recalls a fact at
variance with the impression of his own childhood, sub
duing his fancy to his judgment and to the soirit of the
time. Let myths go by, and it still remain^ that every
child is a natural Ptolemaist, who must be educated to
the Copernican system, and his untutored notions gen
erally are as far from the truth with regard to other
physical phenomena.
The characteristics of the middle portion of the
nineteenth century have been so perplexing, that it is
but natural the elder generation among us should ex
claim, " Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? "
While other arts must change and change, the pure
office of poetry is ever to idealize and prophesy of the
unknown ; and its lovers, forgetting that Nature is lim
itless in her works and transitions, mourn that so
much having been discovered, robbed of its glamour,
and reduced to prosaic fact the poet's ancient office
is at last put by. Let them take fresh heart, recalling
the Master's avowal that Nature's " book of secrecy "
is infinite ; let them note what spiritual and material
spheres are yet untrod ; rejoicing over the past rather
than hopeless of future achievement, let them examine
17
Progress,
and its lau
Features of
an investi
gatingpe
riod.
18
THE PERIOD.
'lI
been favorable to high and creative art. Great pro
ductions usually have been adjusted to the formulas
of some national or world-wide faith, and its common
atmosphere pervades them. The Iliad is subject to
the Hellenic mythology, whose gods and heroes are
its projectors and sustainers. The Divine Comedy,
Paradise Lost, the most imaginative poems, the great
est dramas, each, as it comes to mind, seems, like
the most renowned and glorious paintings, to have
been the product of an age of faith, however sharply
minor sects may have contended within the limits of
the general belief. The want of such a belief often
has led to undue realism, or to inertness on the part
of the best intellects, and in many other ways has
checked the creative impulse, the joyous ardor of the
visionary and poet.
To make another statement of the old position of
art in relation to knowledge, we may say that until a
recent date the imagination, paradoxical as it may
seem, has been most heightened and sustained by the
contemplation of natural objects, raiher as they seem to
be than as we know they are. For to the pure and
absorbed spirit it is the ideal only that seems real ;
as a lover adores the image and simulacrum of his
mistress, pictured to his inner consciousness, more than
the very self and substance of her being. Thus Keats,
the English apprentice, surrounded himself with all
Olympus's hierarchy, and breathed the freshness of
Thessalian forest-winds. But for an instance of per
fect substitution of the seeming for the true, commend
me to the passion and rhapsody of Heine, who on the
last days of his outdoor life, blind to the loving sym
pathy of the actual men and women around him, falls
smitten and helpless at the feet of the Venus of Milo,
AN APPROACHING HARMONY.
his loved ideal beauty, sees her looking upon him with
divine pity and yearning, and hears her words, spoken
o"hly for his ear, " Dost thou not see that I have no
edge
arms, ofandunreality
thereforewas
cannot
present
helpto thee?"
his reason,
The but
knowl
the
high poetic
solation
as soul
onlydisdained
poets know.
it, andSoreceived
also Blake,
such con
that
sublime visionary, tells us : "I assert for myself that
I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me
it is hindrance and not action. ' What ! ' it will be
questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a
disk of fire, somewhat like a guinea ? ' ' O no, no ! I
see an innumerable company of the heavenly host,
crying, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty ! "
I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I
would question a window concerning a sight. I look
through it, and not with it.'"
There are passages in modern poetry that seem to
forebode the approaching harmony of Poetry and Sci
ence ; the essays of Tyndall and Spencer are, the
question of form left out, poems in themselves ; and
there are both philosophers and poets who feel that
no absolute antagonism can exist between them. Dr.
Adolphe Wurtz, in a paper before the French Associa
tion, declared that the mission of science is to struggle
against the unknown, while in letters it is enough to
give an expression, and in art a body, to the concep
tions of the mind or the beauties of nature. To this
we may add that science kindles the imagination with
the new conceptions and new beauties which it has
wrested from the unknown, and thus becomes the
ally of poetry. The latter, in turn, is often the herald
of science, through what is termed the intuition of the
Doet. Whether by means of some occult revelation,
19
20
THE PERIOD.
21
The poet in
undisturbed
possession of
one domain.
A compute
understand'
ing not yet
possible.
III.
While in one sense the recent era, and with more
point than usual, may be called a transition period, it
is found to possess, in no less degree than eras that
have witnessed smaller changes, a character and his
tory of its own. Such a period may be negative, or
composite, in the value of its art-productions. The
dreary interval between the times of Milton and Cow-
The recent
period both
transitional
and crea
tive.
22
The period
transitional
in thought
andfeeling;
creative,
chiefly in
style and
form. Cp.
"Poets of
Amer
ica " pp.
459, 460.
THE PERIOD.
per was of the former non-creative type. An eclipse
of imagination prevailed and seemed to chill and be
numb the poets. They tried to plod along in the wellworn paths, but, like men with bandaged eyes, went
astray without perceiving it. Substituting pedantry
for emotion, and still harping on the old myths, they
reduced them to vapid, artificial unreality, not having
the faculty of reviving their beauty by new forms of
expression. Of the art to conceal art none save a
few like Collins and Goldsmith had the slightest in
stinct or control. As for passion, that was completely
extinct. At last the soul of a later generation de
manded the return to natural beauty, and the heart
clamored for pulsation and utterance: Cowper, Burns,
Wordsworth, Byron, and their great contemporaries,
arose, and with them a genuine creative literature, of
which the poetry strove to express the spirit of nature
and the emotions of the heart, subtile, essential ele
ments, in which no amount of scientific environment
could limit the poet's restless explorations.
Our recent transition period ensued, but, in its com
posite aspect, how different from that to which I have
referred ! The change which has been going on during
this time pertains to imaginative thought and feeling ;
the specific excellence which characterizes its poetry
is that of form and structure. In technical finish and
variety the period has been so advanced that an ex
amination of it should prove most instructive to lovers)
of the arts. For this reason, much of the criticism
in the following pages will be more technical than is
common in a work of this scope ; nor can it be other
wise, and adequately recognize the distinctive emi
nence of the time. The poets have been generously
endowed at birth, and who shall say that they have
23
24
THE PERIOD.
Granted : but in most countries advanced to the front
of modern refinement, the dominant spirit has been
antagonistic to the production of great and lasting
poetry, and of this above other arts. For it is the
passion of song that makes it lofty and enduring, and
the snows of Hecla have overlaid human passion in
English common life during most of the Victorian age.
I am not deploring the so-called materialism of our
century, for this may be more heroic and beneficial
to mankind than the idealism of the past. Neverthe
less, and without magnifying the poet's office, it is fair
to assume that, although a poetical era may not be best
for the contemporary world, it is well for a poet to be
born in such an era, and not ill for literature that he
was so born.
Having thus gone beyond the zone of idealism and
the morning halo of impulsive deed and speech, we
have reached the noonday of common-sense, breed
ing, facts as they are. Men do not mouth it in the
grand manner, for the world has no patience to hear
them, and deems them stagey or affected. Human
emotions are the same, but modern training tones us
down to that impassibility wherein the thoroughbred
Christian woman has been said to rival the Indian
squaw; madmen are not, as of old, thought to be in
spired ; eccentricity bores us ; and poets, who should
be prophets, are loath to boldly dare and differ. Men's
hearts beat on forever, but Thackeray's Englishmen are
ashamed to acknowledge it at their meetings and part
ings. The Platonists taught that the body should be
despised ; we quietly ignore the heart and soul. The
time is off-hand, chaffy, and must be taken in its mood.
A point was very fairly made by " Shakespeare's
Scholar," in his essay on "The Play of the Period,"
25
Great ad
vance in
poetry as an
art.
26
THE PERIOD.
ures by every feasible process, and the careful adap
tation of form to theme. This is an excellence not
to be underestimated; for if, as Huxley asserts, "ex
pression is not valuable for its own sake," it is at least
the wedded body of inspiration, employing the poet's
keenest sensibilities, and lending such value to thought
as the cutting of a diamond adds to the rugged stone.
Never was the technique of poetry so well understood
as since the time of Keats and the rise of Tennyson
and his school. The best models are selected by the
song-writers, the tale-tellers, the preachers in verse ;
and a neophyte of to-day would disdain the triteness
and crudeness of the master-workmen of fifty years ago.
The greater number, instead of restricting themselves
to a specialty, range over and include all departments
of their art, and are lyrists, balladists, and idyllists by
turn, achieving excellence in every direction except the
dramatic, which indeed but few venture upon. Modern
oetry, in short, has been as composite as modern
architecture ; and if, as in the case of the latter, gro
tesque and tawdry combinations abound, there also are
many strong and graceful structures, which excel those
of former periods in richness and harmony of adorn
ment. The rhythm of every dainty lyrical inspiration
which heralded the morning of English minstrelsy has
been caught and adapted by the song-writers, all of
whom, from Barry Cornwall and Hood to Kingsley
and Jean Ingelow, have new arrangements and effects
of their own. The extreme of word-music and wordpainting has been attained, together with a peculiar
condensation in imagery and thought ; so that, whereas
the poets of the last era, for all their strength of wing,
occupied whole passages with a single image, their
more refined successors discover its essential quality
27
28
Adverse in
finance of
the recent
era upon the
minorpoets.
Cj>. "Poets
ofAmer
ica " : ff.
458-461.
THE PERIOD.
masters. And while it is true that nature and history
are the poet's workshop, and all material his property,
the studies and reproductions of foreign or antique
models, except as practice-work, are of less value than
what he can show or say of his own time.
Hence it is of the highest importance to the poet
that he should live in a sympathetic, or co-operative, if
not heroic period. In studying the minor poets, we
see with especial clearness the adverse influences of a
transition era, composite though it be. A likeness of
manner and language is common to the Elizabethan
writers, various as were their themes and natural gifts.
The same is apparent in the Cromwellian period with
regard to Marvell, Shirley, and their contemporaries.
But now, as if in despair of finding new themes to suit
their respective talents, yet driven on to expression,
we discern the Victorian poets, one copying the re
frains and legendary feeling of illuminated missals and
black-letter lays ; another recasting the most enchant
ing and famous romances of Christendom in delicious
language and measures caught from Chaucer himself ;
others adopting the quaint religious manner of Her
bert and Vaughan ; a host essaying new and conscien
tious presentations of the undying beauty of Greek
mythologic lore. We see them dallying with sweet
sense and sound, until our taste for melody and color
is more than surfeited. The language which Henry
Taylor applied to the poets of a former generation
seems even more appropriate with respect to these
artists. They, too, are characterized " by a profusion
of imagery, by force and beauty of language, and by
a versification peculiarly easy and adroit
But
from this undoubted indulgence in the mere luxuries
of poetry, has there not ensued a want of adequate ap
29
30
THE PERIOD.
But the poets of such a period are like a collection
of trout in water that has become stagnant or turbid.
The graceful smaller fry, unconscious that the real
difficulty is in the atmosphere about them, one after
another yield to it and lose their color, flavor, and
elastic life. But the few noble masters of the pool
adapt themselves to the new condition, or resist it
altogether, and abide till the disorder of the waters
is assuaged. Reviewing the poetic genius of the clos
ing era, we find one strong spirit maintaining an in
dependent beauty and vigor through successive gen
erations, composing the rarest prose and poetry with
slight regard to temporal mode or hearing, a man
neither of nor for an age, .. who has but lately passed
away. Another, of a different cast, the acknowledged
master of the composite school, has reflected his own
period by adapting his poems to its landscape, man
ners, and speculation, with such union of strength and
varied elegance as even English literature has seldom
displayed. We find a woman an inspired singer, if
there ever was one all fire and air, her song and soul
alike devoted to liberty, aspiration, and ethereal love.
A poet, her masculine complement, whose name is rich
with the added glory of her renown, represents the
antiquity of his race by study of mediaeval themes, and
exhibits to the modern lover, noble, statesman, thinker,
priest, their prototypes in ages long gone by ; he con
stantly exalts passion above reason, while reasoning
himself, withal, in the too curious fashion of the
present day; again, he is the exponent of what dra
matic spirit is still left to England, that of psycho
logical analysis, which turns the human heart inside
out, judging it not from outward action, in the manner
of the early, simply objective masters of the stage.
31
A nevo tits'
pensation.
The
dramatic
instinct
revived.
British taste
subordinate
to love 0f
novelty.
32
THE PERIOD.
ties are set above the most admirable compositions
in a manner already familiar ; just as an uncouth carv
ing or piece of foreign lacquer-work is more prized
than an exquisite specimen of domestic art, because it
is strange and breathes some unknown, spicy fragrance
of a new-found clime. The transition period, doubt
less, will be prolonged by the ceaseless progress of
the scientific revolution, occupying men's imaginations
and constantly readjusting the basis of language and
illustration. Erelong some new Lucretius may come
to reinterpret the nature of things, confirming many
of the ancient prophecies, and substituting for the
wonder of the remainder the still more wondrous tes
timony of the lens, the laboratory, and the millennial
rocks. The old men of the Jewish captivity wept with
a loud voice when they saw the foundations of the
new temple, because its glory in their eyes, in com
parison with that builded by Solomon, was as nothing ;
but the prophet assured them that the Desire of all
nations should come, and that the glory of the latter
house should be greater than of the former. But I do
not endeavor to anticipate the future of English song.
It may be lowlier or loftier than now, but certainly
it will show a change, and my faith in the reality
of progress is broad enough to include the field of
poetic art.
WALTER
CHAPTER
SAVAGE LANDOR.
II.
34
35
36
Univer
sality,
HIS UNIVERSALITY.
philosophy, history, and art, Goethe is not wiser or
more imaginative, though often more calm and great ;
in learning, the department of science excepted, no
writer since Milton has been more thoroughly equipped.
We place Landor, who was greater, even, as a prosewriter, among the foremost poets, because it was the
poet within the man that made him great; his poetry
belongs to a high order of that art, while his prose,
though strictly prosaic in form, he was too fine an
artist to have it otherwise, is more imaginative than
other men's versesi Radically a poet, he ranks among
the best essayists of his time ; and he shares this dis
tinction in common with Milton, Coleridge, Emerson,
and other poets, in various eras, who have been intel
lectual students and thinkers. None but sentimental
ists and dilettanti confuse their prose and verse,
tricking out the former with a cheap gloss of rhetoric,
or the false and effeminate jingle of a bastard rhythm.
I have hinted, already, that his works are deficient
in that broad human sympathy through which Shake
speare has found his way to the highest and lowest
understandings, just as the cloud seems to one a
temple, to another a continent, to the child a fairypalace, but is dazzling and glorious to all. Landor
belonged, in spite of himself, to the Parnassian aris
tocracy ; was, as has been said, a poet for poets, and
one who personally impressed the finest organizations.
Consider the names of those who, having met him and
known his works, perceived in him something great
and worshipful. His nearest friends or admirers were
Southey, Wordsworth, Hunt, Milnes, Armitage Brown ;
the philosophers, Emerson and Carlyle ; such men of
letters as Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Forster, Julius and
Francis Hare; the bluff old philologist, Samuel Parr;
37
38
39
4Q
"Gebir,"
1798.
igebir:
41
42
THE 'HELLENICS:
his own Idyllia Heroica : Latin poems (many of them
composed and printed forty years earlier) which were
finally collected and revised for publication in a little
volume, Poemata et Inscripiiones, which appeared, I
think, in 1846. Of Landor's aptitude and passion for
writing in Latin verse I shall speak hereafter. His
sin in this respect (if it be a sin),' is amply expiated
by the surpassing beauty of " Corythus," the " Last of
Ulysses," and other translations from the "Idyllia."
Still more exquisite, if possible, are the fifteen idyls,
also called Hellenics, which previously had been col
lected in the standard octavo edition of his works,
edited by Julius Hare and John Forster, and printed
in 1846. During the past thirty years a taste for
experimenting with classical themes has seized upon
many a British poet, and numberless fine studies have
been the result, from the " (Enone " and " Tithonus "
of the laureate to more extended pieces, like the
" Andromeda " of Kingsley, and Swinburne's " Atalanta in Calydon." But to Landor, from his youth,
the antique loveliness was a familiar atmosphere, in
which he dwelt and had his being with a contentment
so natural that he scarcely perceived it was not com
mon to others, or thought to avail himself of it in
the way of metrical art. Finding that people could
not, or would not, read the " Idyllia," he was led to
translate them into English verse; and of all the
classical pieces in our language, his own, taken as
a whole, are the most varied, natural, simple, least
affected with foreign forms :
"Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river."
1 See remarks upon Swinburne's Greek and Latin verse, etc.,
in Chapter XI. of this book.
43
44
45
46
47
49
Lack of
theme.
Greatness as
a ivriier of
English
prose.
50
A TRINITY OF PROSE-POEMS.
enabled to construct a trinity of prose-poems, not frag
mentary episodes or dialogues, but round and perfect
compositions, each of them finished and artistic in
the extreme degree. The Citation of Shakespeare, the
Pentameron, and Pericles and Aspasia depict England,
Italy, and Greece at their renowned and character
istic periods : the greenwood and castle-halls of Eng
land, the villas and cloisters of Italy, the sky and
marbles of ancient Greece ; the pedantry and poetry
of the first, the mysticism of the second, the deathless
grace and passion of Athens at her prime. Of "The
Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare,
etc., etc., Touching Deer-Stealing," I can but repeat
what Charles Lamb said, and all that need here be
said of it, that only two men could have written
it, he who wrote it, and the man it was written on.
It can only be judged by reading, for there is nothing
resembling it in any tongue. "The Pentameron" (of
Boccaccio and Petrarca) was the last in date of
these unique conceptions, and the favorite of Hunt,
Crabb Robinson, Disraeli ; a mediaeval reproduction,
the tone of which while always in keeping with
itself is so different from that of the " Citation,"
that one would think it done by another hand, if any
other hand were capable of doing it. Even to those
who differ with its estimation of Dante, its learning,
fidelity, and picturesqueness seem admirable beyond
comparison. The highest luxury of a sensitive, cul
tured mind is the perusal of a work like this. Mrs.
Browning found some of its pages too delicious to
turn over. Yet this study had been preceded by the
" Pericles and Aspasia," which, as an exhibition of
intellectual beauty, may be termed the masterpiece of
Landor's whole career.
51
A trinity of
prose-poems.
" Citation of
Shake
speare"
834-
52
53
cf- " Poel>
ofA merua" -.
43Aristocratism in art.
54
study of
There has been much confusion of Landor's per*pst7Jhu- sonal history with his writings, and an inclination to
toryjudge the latter by the former. The benison of Time
enables us, after the lapse of years, to discriminate
between the two ; while the punishment of a misgov
erned career is that it hinders even the man of genius
from being justified during his lifetime. However,
before further consideration of Landor's works, that
we may see what bearing the one had on the other,
and with this intention solely, let us observe the
man himself.
55
56
HIS UNCONVENTIONALISM.
his case. It was impossible to make him a conven
tional respecter of persons and temporal things. If
ever a man looked through and through clothes and
titles, Landor did ; and as for property, it seemed
to him impedimenta and perishable stuff. Yet he loved
luxury, and was uncomfortable when deprived of it.
Determined, first of all, to live his life, to enjoy and
develop every gift and passion, he touched life at more
points than do most men of letters. Possibly he had
not the self-denial of those exalted devotees, who eat,
marry, and live for art alone. The lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life were strong
within him. Here he resembled Byron and Alfieri,
to whom he was otherwise related, except that his
heart was too warm and light for the vulgar misan
thropy of the first, and his blood too clean and health
ful for the grosser passions of either.
Trouble bore lightly enough upon a man who so
readily forgot the actual world, that we find him writ
ing Latin idyls just after his first flight from his wife,
or turning an epigram when his estate was ruined
forever. Inconstant upon the slightest cause, he yet
was faithful to certain life-long friends, and, if one
suffered never so little for his sake, was ready to
yield life or fortune in return. Such was his feeling
toward Robert Landor, Forster, Southey, Browning,
and the great novelist who drew that genial caricature
by which his likeness is even now most widely known
Dickens, who of all men was least fit to pronounce
judgment Upon Landor's work, and cared the least to
do it, was of all most fit to estimate his strength and
weakness, his grim and gentle aspects. In " Boythorn " we hear his laugh rising higher, peal on peal ;
we almost see his leonine face and lifted brow, the
3*
57
58
AMATEURSHIP IN ART.
means of living, enjoying the pleasure which comes
from being in harness and from duty squarely per
formed. They plume themselves el ego in Arcadia
upon sharing not only the transports, but the drudg
ery of the literary guild. Generally, I say, distrust
writers who come not in by the strait gate, but clamber
over the wall of amateurship. Literary men, who have
had both genius and a competence, have so felt this
that they have insisted upon the uttermost farthing for
their work, thus maintaining, though at the expense of
a reputation for avarice, the dignity of the profession,
and legitimizing their own connection with it. This
Landor was never able to do : his writing either was
not remunerative, because not open to popular sympa
thy, or unsympathetic because not remunerative ; at all
events, the two conditions went together. He began
to write for the love of it, and was always, perforce, an
amateur rather than a member of the guild. As he
grew older, he would have valued a hundred pounds
earned by his pen more than a thousand received from
his estate ; but although he estimated properly the
value of his work, and, thinking others would do the
same, was always appropriating in advance hypotheti
cal earnings to philanthropic ends, he never gained a
year's subsistence by literature ; and such of his works
as were not printed at his own expense, with the excep
tion of the first two volumes of " Imaginary Conversa
tions," entailed losses upon the firms venturing their
publication.
But amateurship in Landor's case, enforced or
chosen, did not become dilettanteism ; on the con
trary, it made him finely independent and original.
His own boast was that he was a " creature who imi
tated nobody and whom nobody imitated ; the man
59
6o
LOVE OF NATURE.
when he bought and tried to perfect the Welsh estate,
and would have grown a forest of half a million trees,
but for his own impracticability and the boorishness
of the country churls about him. Unlike many re
flective poets, however, he never permits landscape
to distract the attention in his figure-pieces, but with
masterly art introduces it sufficiently to relieve and
give effect to their dramatic purpose. That he is
often tempted to do otherwise he confesses in a letter
to Southey, and adds : " I am fortunate, for I never
compose a single verse within doors, except in bed
sometimes. I do not know what the satirists would
say if they knew that most of my verses spring from
a gate-post or a mole-hill."
Trees, flowers, every
growing thing was sacred to him, and informed with
happy life. It was his wish and way
"To let all flowers live freely, and all die,
Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart,
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank,
And not reproached me ; the ever-sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold."
His affection for dogs and other dumb creatures,
like his understanding of them, is no less instinctive
and sincere. Of all the Louis Quatorze rhymesters
he tolerates La Fontaine only, "for I never see an
animal," he writes, "unless it be a parrot or a mon
key or a pug-dog or a serpent, that I do not converse
with it either openly or secretly."
In the dialogue to which I have referred he pro
tests against the senseless imitation of Grecian archi
tecture in the cold climate of our North, and this
61
62
HIS KNOWLEDGE.
Epicurean in the zest with which he made the most
63
of life, and his nearness to nature may seem pagan
to those whose idealism is that of the desk and closet
only. " It is hard," he says of gunning, " to take
what we cannot give ; and life is a pleasant thing, at
least to birds. No doubt the young ones say tender
things one to another, and even the old ones do not
dream of death."
Landor's appetite for knowledge was insatiable, wor His kttorvlthy of the era, and his acquisitions were immense. He edgt.
gathered up facts insensibly and retained everything
that he observed or read. Of history he was a close
and universal student. As he possessed no books of
reference, it is not surprising that his memory was
occasionally at fault. De Quincey said that his learn
ing was sometimes defective, but this was high praise
from De Quincey, and of his genius, that he always
rose with his subject, and dilated, " like Satan, into
Teneriffe or Atlas when he saw before him an an
tagonist worthy of his powers." Landor is not so
generous
compounder
one
history
to of
that
himself,
historical
I have
but facts
read,
affirms,
another
" I Iamhave
that
a horrible
Iusually
have
64
CRITICAL POWERS.
6S
66
HIS AUDIENCE.
Longfellow, Tennyson, and other public favorites,
it is. certain, nevertheless, that he has long emerged
from that condition in which De Quincey designated
him as a man of great genius who might lay claim to
a reputation on the basis of not being read. He has
gained a hearing from a fit audience, though few,
which will have its successors through many genera
tions. To me his fame seems more secure than that
of some of his popular contemporaries. If Landor
himself had any feeling upon the subject, it was that
time would yield him justice. No one could do better
without applause, worked less for it, counted less upon
it ; yet when it came to him he was delighted in a
simple way. It pleased him by its novelty, and often
he pronounced it critical because it was applause
and overestimated the bestower : that is, he knew the
verdict of his few admirers was correct, and by it
gauged their general understanding. He challenged his
critics with a perfect consciousness of his own excellence
in art ; yet only asserted his rights when they were de
nied him. In all his books there is no whit of coward
ice or whining. Nothing could make them morbid and
jaundiced, for it was chiefly as an author that he had a
religion
Landor's
and prolonged
conscience,discouragements,
and was capablehowever,
of self-denial.
made
him contemptuous of putting out his strength before
people who did not properly measure him, and he
felt all the loneliness of a man superior to his time.
ceded its date of compilation. The later Hellenics, Last Fruit
off an Old Tree, Heroic Idyls, Scenes for a Study, etc., can only
be procured in separate volumes and pamphlets, and, in book
seller's diction, are fast becoming "rare." January, 1875: a
complete edition of Landor, in six volumes, is now announced
for early publication by a London house.
67
68
69
70
71
IV. S. L.
died in Flortnet, Sefl.
17, 1864.
CHAPTER
III.
II.
Examining the work of these minor, yet representa
tive poets, we find that of Thomas Hood so attractive
and familiar, that in his case the former qualification
seems a distinction by no wide remove from the best
of his contemporaries. He had a portion of almost
every gift belonging to a true poet, and but for re
stricted health and fortune would have maintained a
higher standard. His sympathetic instinct was espe
cially tender and alert ; he was the poet of the heart,
and sound at heart himself, the poet of humane
sentiment, clarified by a living spring of humor, which
kept it from any taint of sentimentalism. To read
his pages is to laugh and weep by turns ; to take on
human charity; to regard the earth mournfully, yet
be thankful, as he was, for what sunshine falls upon
it, and to accept manfully, as he did, each one's
condition, however toilsome and suffering, under the
changeless law that impels and governs all. Even
his artistic weaknesses (and he had no other) were
frolicsome and endearing. Much of his verse was
the poetry of the beautiful, in a direction opposite to
that of the metaphysical kind. His humor not his
jaded humor, the pack-horse of daily task-work, but
4
73
74
THOMAS HOOD.
his humor at its best, which so lightened his pack of
ills and sorrows, and made all England know him
was the merriment of hamlets and hostels around the
skirts of Parnassus, where not the gods, but Earth's
common children, hold their gala-days within the
shadow. Lastly, his severer lyrical faculty was musi
cal and sweet: its product is as refined as the most
exacting need require, and keeps more uniformly than
other modern poetry to the idiomatic measures of
English song.
Hood failed in a youthful effort to master the
drudgery of a commercial desk. He then attempted
to practise the art of engraving, but found it ruin
ous to his health. It served to develop a pleasant
knack of sketching, which was similar in quality and
after-use to Thackeray's gift in that line, and came
as readily to its owner. At last he easily drifted into
the life of a working man of letters, and figured
creditably, both as humorist and as poet, before the
commencement of the present British reign. Yet that
portion of his verse which is engrafted upon litera
ture as distinctively his own was not composed, it
will be seen, until within the years immediately pre
ceding his death. He thus occupies a niche in the
arcade along which our vision at present is directed.
His youthful career, in fact, belongs to that in
terval when people were beginning to shake off the
influence of Byron and his compeers, and to ask for
something new. It is noticeable that the works of
Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge separated themselves
from the dkbris, and greatly affected the rising genera
tion of poets, inciting a reaction, from the passionate
unrestraint of the romantic school, to the fastidious
art of which Keats was the rarest and most intuitive
75
76
THOMAS HOOD.
shorter lyrics of that period, many of which were de
licious, and beyond his own power to excel in later
years. His ballads contributed to the magazines
and annuals, then in vogue, with which he was con
nected are full of grace, simplicity, pathos, and spirit.
All must acknowledge, with Poe, that "Fair Ines" is
perfect of its kind. Take this exquisite ballad, and
others, written at various dates throughout his life,
"It was not in the Winter," "Sigh on, sad Heart,"
" She 's up and gone, the graceless Girl," " What
can an old Man do but die?" "The Death-Bed,"
"I Remember, I Remember," "Ruth," "Farewell,
Life ! " ; take also the more imaginative odes to be
found in his collected works, such as those "To
Melancholy" and "To the Moon"; take these lyrical
poems, and give them, after some consideration of
present verse-making, a careful reading anew. They
are here cited as his lyrical conceptions, not as work
in what afterward proved to be his special field, and
we shortly may dismiss this portion of our theme.
I call these songs and ballads, poetry : poetry of the
lasting sort, native to the English tongue, and attrac
tive to successive generations. I believe that some
of them will be read when many years have passed
away ; that they will be picked out and treasured by
future compilers, as we now select and delight in the
songs of Jonson, Suckling, Herrick, and other noble
kinsmen. Place them in contrast with efforts of the
verbal school, all sound and color, conveying no pre
cise sentiment, vivified by no motive sweet with feeling
or easeful with unstudied rhythm. Of a truth, much
of this elaborate modern verse is but the curious
fashion of a moment, and as the flower of grass : " the
grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away."
77
begetter's
cate
Although
poemsheart,
Hood
which
hetook
were
at once
little
the gained
recognition
children
the nearest
favor
by theoftheir
delihis humorHood's
78
THOMAS HOOD.
might essay, the public was stolidly expecting a quip
or a jest. These were kindly given, though often
poor as the health and fortunes of the jester; and
it is. no marvel that, under the prolonged draughts
of Hood's Own and the Comic Annuals, the beery
mirth ran swipes. Even then it was just as eagerly
received, for the popular sense of wit is none too
nice, and the British commons retain their honest
youthfulness, coarse of appetite, pleased with a rattle,
tickled with a straw.
There is no more sorrowful display of metrical
literature a tribute extorted from the poet who
wrote for a living than the bulk of his comic verses
brought together in the volumes of Hood's remains.
It was a sin and a shame to preserve it, but there
it lies, with all its wretched puns and nonsense of
the vanished past, a warning to every succeeding
writer! To it might be added countless pages of
equally valueless and trivial prose. Yet what clever
work the man could do ! In extravaganzas like " The
Tale of a Trumpet" his sudden laughter flashes into
wit; and there are half-pensive, half-mirthful lyrics,
such as "A Retrospective Review," and the "Lament
for the Decline of Chivalry," thrown off no less for
his own than for the public enjoyment, of which the
humor is natural and refined: not that of our day, to
be sure, but to be estimated with the author's nation
ality and time. The "Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire,"
though long and loosely written, is an honest, health
ful satire, that would have delighted Robert Burns.
In one sense the term " comic poetry " is a misno
mer. A poem often is just so much the less a poem
by the amount it contains of puns, sarcasm, " broad
grins," and other munitions of the satirist or farceur.
COMIC POETRY.
Yet the touch of the poet's wand glorifies the lightest,
commonest object, and consecrates everything that is
human to the magician's use. There is an imagina
tive mirth, no less than an imaginative wrath or pas
sion, and with this element Hood's most important
satirical poem is charged throughout. The " Golden
Legend " of " Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg,"
as a sustained piece of metrical humor, is absolutely
unique. The flexible metre takes the reader with it,
from the first line to the last, and this is no small
achievement. The poem is utterly unhampered, yet
quite in keeping ; the satire faithful and searching ;
the narrative an audacious, fanciful story ; the final
tragedy as grotesque as that of a Flemish Dance of
Death. At first the poet revels in his apotheosis of
gold, the subject and motive of the poem : the yellow,
cruel, pompous metal lines the floor, walls, and ceil
ing of his structure ; it oozes, molten, from every
break and crevice ; the personages are clothed in it ;
threads of gold bind the rushing couplets together.
What a picture of rich, auriferous, vulgar London
life ! Passages of grim pathos are scattered here and
there, as by Thackeray in the prose satires of " Cath
erine " and " Barry Lyndon." When the murdered
Countess's " spark, called vital," has departed,
when in the morning,
" Her Leg, the Golden Leg, was gone,
And the ' Golden Bowl was broken,' "
then comes the " Moral " of the jester's tale :
"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled ;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
79
8o
THOMAS HOOD.
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled :
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould ;
Price of many a crime untold ;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousand-fold !
How widely its agencies vary
To save to ruin to curse to bless
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary."
mnd Hood.
Poverty un
friendly to
the Must.
Cp. " Poets
ofAmer
ica": p.
268.
A uthorship
andjour-
82
THOMAS HOOD.
cp. " Poets which bore no relation to letters ; hoping that authoriat":ff. ship would proffer him thenceforth the freshness of
75. io8,
variety, that upon occasion of loss or trouble it might
be his solace and recompense, and that, with a less
jaded brain, what writing he could accomplish would
be of a more enduring kind. It is so true, however,
that one nail drives out another ! As an editor, this
person was unable to do anything beyond his news
paper work ; as a business-man, with not the soundest
health, and with his heart, of course, not fully in his
occupation, he found himself neither at ease in his
means, nor able to gain sturdier hours for literature
than vigorous journalist-authors filch from recreation
and sleep. Fortunate in every way is the aesthetic
writer who has sufficient income to support him alto
gether, or, at least, when added to the stipend earned
by first-class work, to enable him to follow art without
harassment. For want of such a resource, poets, with
their delicate temperaments, may struggle along from
year to year, composing at intervals which other men
devote to social enjoyment, rarely doing their best ;
possibly with masterpieces stifled in their brains till
the creative period is ended ; misjudged by those
whom they most respect, and vexed with thoughts of
what they could perform, if sacred common duties
were not so incumbent upon them.
Hood a
Nevertheless, if Hood's life had been one of schojoumaiist- ]astic ease, in all likelihood he would not have writpoet.
ten that for which his name is cherished. He was
eminently a journalist-poet, and must be observed in
that capacity. Continuous editorial labor, beginning
in 182 1 with his post upon The London Magazine,
and including his management of The Comic Annual,
Hood's Own, The Nrw Monthly, and, lastly, Hood's
LONDOXTS POET.
Magazine, established but little more than a year
83
before his death, this journalistic experience, doubt
less, gave him closer knowledge of the wants and
emotions of the masses, and especially of the popu
lace in London's murky streets. Even his facetious
poems depict the throng upon the walks. The sweep,
the laborer, the sailor, the tradesman, even the dumb
beasts that render service or companionship, appeal
to his kindly or mirthful sensibilities and figure in
his rhymes. Thus he was, also, London's poet, the LoudoWs
nursling of the city which gave him birth, and now Poet.
holds sacred his resting-place in her cemetery of Kensal Green. Like the gentle Elia, whom he resembled
in other ways, he loved " the sweet security of streets,"
and well, indeed, he knew them. None but such as
he The
couldrich
rightly
philanthropist
speak for or
their
aristocratic
wanderersauthor
and poor.
may
Fellowship
honestly give his service to the lower classes, and 0fthe poor.
endeavor by contact with them to enter into their
feelings, yet it is almost impossible, unless nurtured
yourself at the withered bosom of our Lady of Pov
erty, to read the language of her patient foster-chil
dren. The relation of almoner and beneficiary still
exists, a sure though indefinable barrier. Hood was
not exclusively a poet of the people, like Elliott or
Be'ranger, but one who interpreted the popular heart,
being himself a sufferer, and living from hand to
mouth by ill-requited toil. If his culture divided him
somewhat from the poor, he all the more endured
a lack of that free confession which is the privilege
of those than whom he was no richer. The genteel
poor must hide their wounds, even from one another.
Hood solaced his own trials by a plea for those
"whom he saw suffer." A man of kindred genius,
84
THOMAS HOOD.
the most potent of the band of humanitarian writers,
who, in his time, sought to effect reform by means
of imaginative art, also understood the poor, but
chiefly through the memory of his own youthful expe
riences. In after years the witchery of prose-romance
brought to Charles Dickens a competence that Hood
never could hope to acquire. Most men of robust
physical vigor, who have known privation, yield to
luxury when they achieve success, and Dickens was
no exception ; but his heart was with the multitude,
he never was quite at home in stately mansions, and,
though accused of snobbery in other forms, would
admit no one's claim to patronize him by virtue of
either rank or fortune.
We readily perceive that Hood's modes of feeling
resembled those which intensify the prose of Dickens,
though he made no approach to the latter in reputa
tion and affluent power. Could Dickens have written
verse, an art in which his experiments were, for the
most part, utter failures, it would have been marked
by wit and pathos like Hood's, and by graphic, Doresque effects, that have grown to be called melodra
matic, and that give a weird strength to " The Dream
of Eugene Aram," " The Haunted House," and to
several passages in the death-scene of " Miss Kilmansegg." Hood has nearly equalled Dickens in the
analysis of a murderer's spectral conscience :
"But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain
That lighted me to bed ;
And drew my midnight curtains round,
With fingers bloody red !
" Merrily rose the lark, and shook
The dew-drop from its wing;
85
85
THOMAS HOOD.
glimpses of England's greensward and hedge-rows,
yet the special walk and study of each were in the
streets and alleys of London ; together they breathed
the same burdened, whispering, emotional atmosphere
of the monster town. They were of the circle which
Jerrold drew around him, the London group of hu
mane satirists and poets. Theirs was no amateur or
closet work, but the flower of zeal and fellow-craft,
which binds the workmen's hearts together, and
makes art at once an industry, a heroism, and a
vitalizing faith.
Our digression at length has brought us to the
special group of lyrics upon which Hood's fame indu
bitably rests. The manner of what I call his proper
style had been indicated long before, in such pieces
as " The Elm-Tree " and " The Dream of Eugene
Aram," of which the former is too prolonged, a stilllife painting, barren of human elements, and the
latter, as has been seen, a remarkable ballad, ap
proaching Coleridge's " Rime of the Ancient Mariner "
in conception and form. In Hood's case the intel
lectual flames shone more brightly as his physical
heat went out ; in the very shadow of death he was
doing his best, with a hand that returned to the pure
ideals of his youth, and a heart that gained increase
of gentleness and compassion as its throbs timed more
rapidly the brief remainder of his earthly sojourn. In
his final year, while editor of Hood1s Magazine, a jour
nal to which he literally gave his life, he composed
three of the touching lyrics to which I refer : " The
Lay of the Laborer," " The Lady's Dream," and
"The Bridge of Sighs." The memorable "Song of
the Shirt " was written a few months earlier, having
appeared anonymously in the preceding Christmas
87
88
THOMAS HOOD.
the compassion of the Gospel itself; the theme is
here touched once and forever ; other poets who have
essayed it, with few exceptions, have smirched their
fingers, and soiled or crushed the shell they picked
from the mud, in their very effort to redeem it from pol
lution. The dramatic sorrow which attends the lot of
womanhood in the festering city reaches its ultimate
expression in " The Bridge of Sighs " and " The Song
of the Shirt." They were the twin prayers which the
suffering poet sent up from his death-bed, and, methinks, should serve as an expiation for the errors of
his simple life.
Our brief summary of the experience and work of
Thomas Hood has shown that his more careful poetry
is marked by natural melody, simplicity, and direct
ness of language, and is noticeable rather for sweet
ness than imaginative fire. There are no strained
and affected cadences in his songs. Their diction
is so clear that the expression of the thought has no
resisting medium, a high excellence in ballad-verse.
With respect to their sentiment, all must admire the
absolute health of Hood's poetry written during years
of prostration and disease. He warbled cheering and
trustful music, either as a foil to personal distress,
which would have been quite too much to bear, had
he encountered its echo in his own voice, or else
through a manly resolve that, come what might, he
would have nothing to do with the poetry of despair.
The man's humor, also, buoyed him up, and thus was
its own exceeding great reward.
How prolonged his worldly trials were, what were
the privations and constant apprehensions of the lit
tle group beneath his swaying roof-tree, something
of this is told in the Memorials compiled by his
89
9b
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
ers, and admirers, throughout the kingdom, alike pro
foundly touched, gave him words of consolation as
well as practical aid. A new generation has arisen
since his death at the age of forty-six, but it is pleas
ant to remember the eagerness and generosity with
which, seven years afterward, the English people con
tributed to erect the beautiful monument that stands
above his grave. The rich gave their guineas ; the
poor artisans and laborers, the needlewomen and
dress-makers, in hosts, their shillings and pence. Be
neath the image of the poet, which rests upon the
structure, are sculptured the words which he himself,
with a still unsatisfied yearning for the affection of
his fellow-beings, and a beautiful perception of the
act for which it long should be rendered to his mem
ory, devised for the inscription : "He sang The
Song of the Shirt."
III.
From the grave of Hood we pass to observe a liv
ing writer, in some respects his antipode, who deals
with precisely those elements of modern life which
the former had least at heart. It is true that Mat
thew Arnold, whose first volume was issued in 1848,
had little reputation as a poet until some years after
Hood's decease; but up to that time English verse
was not marked by its present extreme variety, nor
had the so-called school of culture obtained a foot
hold. Arnold's circumstances have been more favor
able than Hood's, and in youth his mental discipline
was thorough ; yet the humorist was the truer poet,
although three fourths of his productions never should
have been written, and although there scarcely is a
92
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
A rnold's
poetic the'
Ory.
In other poems, which reveal his saddest or profoundest intellectual moods, he is subjective and
refutes his own theory. For his work claims to be
produced upon a theory, that of epic or classical
objectivity, well and characteristically set forth in
the preface to his edition of 1854. Possibly this
was written shortly after the completion of some
purely objective poem, like " Sohrab and Rustum,"
and the theory deduced from the performance. An
HIS LIMITATIONS.
objective method is well suited to a man of large
or subtile intellect and educated tastes, who is
deficient in the minor sympathies. Through it he
can allow his imagination full play, and give a
pleasure to readers without affecting that feminine
instinct which really is not a constituent of his
poetic mould.
Arnold has little quality or lightness of touch. His
hand is stiff, his voice rough by nature, yet both are
refined by practice and thorough study of the best
models. His shorter metres, used as the framework
of songs and lyrics, rarely are successful ; but through
youthful familiarity with the Greek choruses he has
caught something of their irregular beauty. "The
Strayed Reveller" has much of this unfettered charm.
Arnold is restricted in the range of his affections ; but
that he is one of those who can love very loyally the
few with whom they do enter into sympathy, through
consonance of traits or experiences, is shown in the
emotional poems entitled "Faded Leaves" and "In
difference," and in later pieces, which display more
lyrical fluency, " Calais Sands " and " Dover Beach."
A prosaic manner injures many of his lyrics : at least,
he does not seem clearly to distinguish between the
functions of poetry and of prose. He is more at ease
in long, stately, and swelling measures, whose graver
movement accords with a serious and elevated pur
pose. Judged as works of art, " Sohrab and Rustum "
and " Balder Dead " really are majestic poems. Their
blank-verse, while independent of Tennyson's, is the
result, like that of the " Morte d'Arthur," of its
author's Homeric studies ; is somewhat too slow in
Balder Dead, and fails of the antique simplicity, but
is terse, elegant, and always in "the grand manner.",
93
His limita
tions.
His blankverse.
" Balder
Dead."
94
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Upon the whole, this is a remarkable production ; it
stands at the front of all experiments in a field remote
as the northern heavens and almost as glacial and
clear. Fifty lines, which describe the burning of Balder's ship, his funeral pyre, have an imaginative
grandeur rarely excelled in the " Idyls of the King."
Such work is what lay beyond Hood's power even to
attempt ; and shows the larger mould of Arnold's intel
lect. A first-class genius would display the varying
endowments of them both.
Sohrab and Rustum is a still finer poem, because
more human, and more complete in itself. The verse
is not so devoid of epic swiftness. The powerful
conception of the relations between the two chieftains,
and the slaying of the son by the father, are tragical
and heroic. The descriptive passage at the close, for
diction and breadth of tone, would do honor to any
living poet :
" But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon : he flowed
Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunje,
Brimming, and bright, and large : then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents ; that for many a league
The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles,
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
A foiled circuitous wanderer : till at last
The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea."
95
Objective
themes.
Preface to
edition of
1854.
96
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
chant away, to ease his quivering heartstrings of
some impassioned strain.
We cannot accept his implication that he was born
too late, since by this very reflection of the unrest
and bewilderment of our time he holds his represent
ative position in the present survey. The generation
listens with interest to a thinker of his speculative
cast. He is the pensive, doubting Hamlet of modern
verse, saying of himself : " Dii me terrent, et Jupiter
hostis ! Two kinds of dilettanti, says Goethe, there are
in poetry : he who neglects the indispensable mechan
ical part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows
spirituality and feeling; and he who seeks to arrive
at poetry by mere mechanism, in which he can acquire
an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter.
And he adds, that the first does the most harm to
Art, and the last to himself." Quite as frankly Ar
nold goes on to enroll himself among dilettanti of the
latter class. These he places, inasmuch as they pre
fer Art to themselves, before those who, with less rev
erence, exhibit merely spirituality and feeling. Here,
let me say, he is unjust to himself, for much of his
verse combines beautiful and conscientious workman
ship with the purest sentiment, and has nothing of
dilettanteism about it. This often is where he for
sakes his own theory, and writes subjectively. " The
Buried Life," " A Summer Night," and a few other
pieces in the same key, are to me the most poetical
of his efforts, because they are the outpourings of his
own heart, and show of what exalted tenderness and
ideality he is capable. A note of ineffable sadness
still arises through them all. A childlike disciple of
Wordsworth, he is not, like his master, a law and
comfort to himself; a worshipper of Goethe, he at
97
98
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
99
Prosewritings.
The criti
calfaculty
in poets.
Cp. "Poets
ofA merica " - pp.
326-338.
IOO
IV.
A wide leap, indeed, from Matthew Arnold to
" Barry Cornwall," under which familiar and mu
sical lyronym Bryan Waller Procter has had more
singers of his songs than students of his graver
pages. No lack of spontaneity here ! Freedom is
the life and soul of his delicious melodies, composed
during thraldom to the most prosaic work, yet tune
ful as the carols of a lark upon the wing. It is hard
to think of Procter as a lawyer, who used to chant
to himself in a London omnibus, on his daily jour
neys to and from the city. He is a natural vocalist,
were it not for whom we might almost affirm that
IOI
Special
quality of
the sons.
" Melodies
and Madri
gals" New
York, 1866.
102
LEIGH HUNT.
103
104
EARLY WRITINGS.
developed to the ramt excellence at least one faculty
of his poetic gift.
But we have, fir C, to consider him as a pupil of
the renaissance : ? poet of what may be termed the
interregnum between Byron and Tennyson, for the
Byronic passion is absolutely banished from the idyllic
strains of Tennyson and his followers, who, neverthe
less, betray the influences of Wordsworth and Keats
in wedded force. Procter's early writings were em
braced in three successive volumes of Dramatic Scenes,
etc., which appeared in 1819-21, and met with a
friendly reception. Some of the plays were headed
by quotations from Massinger, Webster, and such
dramatists, and otherwise indicated the author's choice
of models. His verse, though uneven, was occasion
ling
ally poetical
in these and
lines strong.
from " The
ThereWay
is breadth
to Conquer
of hand
" :
Moan and make music through
"The its
winds
halls, and there
The mountain-loving eagle builds his home.
But all 's a waste : for miles and miles around
There 's not a cot."
An extract from a poem entitled " Flowers " has the
beauty of favorite passages in "The Winter's Tale"
and "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," the flavor and
picturesque detail of Shakespeare's blossomy descrip
tions :
" There the rose unveils
Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud
O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish.
But first of all the violet, with an eye
Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop,
Born of the breath of Winter, and on his brow
Fixed like a pale and solitary star ;
5*
io6
MELODIOUS LYRICS.
the front rank of his contemporaries, not only as one
of the brilliant writers for The London Magazine, but
respected by practical judges who cater for the public
taste. His stage tragedy, Mirandola, was brought out
at the Covent Garden theatre, apparently with suc
cess. Macready, Charles Kemble, and Miss Foote
figured in the cast. It is an acting drama, with a plot
resembling that of Byron's " Parisina." A volume
of two years' later date exhibits less progress in con
structive power. It contained " The Flood of Thessaly," "The Girl of Provence," "The Letter of Boc
caccio," " The Fall of Saturn," etc., poems which
show greater finish, but little originality, and more
of the influence of Hunt and Keats. Throughout
the five books under review, the blank-verse, some
times effective, as in " Marcelia," is often jagged
and diffuse. The classical studies are not equal to
those of the poet's last-named associate. In Procter's
lyrical verses, however, we now begin to see the
groundwork of his later eminence as a writer of Eng
lishAmong
songs.the sweetest of these melodies was " Goldentressed Adelaide," a ditty warbled for the gentle child
whose after-career was to be a dream-life of poesy
and saintliness, ending all too early, and bearing to
his own the relation of a song within a song. I give
the opening stanza :
" Sing, I pray, a little song,
Neither
Mother
sad, dear
nor !very long :
It is for a little maid,
Golden-tressed Adelaide !
Therefore let it suit a merry, merry ear,
Mother dear ! "
107
io8
The poet's
109
no
'ENGLISH SONGS:
111
Petrel," dips its pinions in the brine, and has the lib
erty of Prospero's tricksy spirit, " be 't to fly, to swim,
to dive":
" A thousand miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea ;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast :
Up and down ! Up and down !
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam
The Stormy Petrel finds a home ! "
The zest and movements of these and a few kindred Fresh and
buoyant
melodies have brought them into special favor. Their music.
virile, barytone quality is dominant in the superb
" Hunting Song," with its refrain awakening the lusty
morn :
" Now, thorough the copse, where the fox is found,
And over the stream, at a mighty bound,
And over the high lands, and over the low,
O'er furrows, o'er meadows, the hunters go !
Away ! as a hawk flies full at its prey,
So flieth the hunter, away, away !
From the burst at the cover till set of sun,
When the red fox dies, and the day is done!
Hark, hark! What sound on the wind is borne?
'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn.
The horn, the horn !
The merry, bold voice of the hunter's horn."
Procter's convivial glees are the choruses of robust
and gallant banqueters, and would stifle in the throat
of a sensual debauchee. The Vine Song,
" Sing ! Who sings
To her who weareth a hundred rings ? "
112
"3
" Dramatic
Frag
ments."
B. W. P.
died in Lon
don. Oct. 4,
1874.
CHAPTER
IV.
n6
II.
What is the story of her maidenhood? Not only
of those early years which, no matter how long we
continue, are said to make up the greater portion of
our life ; but also of an unwedded period which
lasted to that ominous year, the thirty-seventh, which
has ended the song of other poets at a date when
her own so far as the world heard her had but
just begun. How grew our Psyche in her chrysalid
state ? For she was like the insect that weaves itself
a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is
impelled to break through its covering, and come out
a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth,
and of passion in the splendor of its tawny dyes.
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett was born of wealthy par
ents, in 1809, and began her literary efforts almost
contemporaneously with Tennyson. Apparently, for
the world has not yet received the inner history of a
life, which, after all, was so purely intellectual that
only herself could have revealed it to us, appar
ently, I say, she was the idol of her kindred ; and
especially of a father who wondered at her genius
and encouraged the projects of her eager youth.
Otherwise, although she was a rhymer at the age of
ten, how could she have published, in her seventeenth
year, her didactic Essay, composed in heroics after
the method of Pope ? Apparently, too, she had a
mind of that fine northern type which hungers after
learning for its own sake, and to which the study of
books or nature is an instinctive and insatiable de
117
n8
119
120
A LIBERAL SCHOLAR.
the two latter both in form and by instinct, have
been writers of prose, before whom the poet takes
precedence, by inherited and defensible prerogative.
It was a piece of good fortune that Miss Barrett's
technical study of roots, inflections, and what not was
elementary and incidental. She and her companion
read Greek for the music and wisdom of a literature
which, as nations ripen and grow old, still holds its
own, an exponent of pure beauty and the univer
sal mind. The result would furnish a potent example
for those who hold, with Professor Tayler Lewis, that
the classical tongues should be studied chiefly for the
sake of their literature. She was not a scholar, in
the grammarian's sense ; but broke the shell . of a
language for the meat which it contained. Hence
her reading was so varied as to make her the most
powerful ally of the classicists among popular au
thors. Her poetical instinct for meanings was equal
to Shelley's ; as for Keats, he created a Greece and
an Olympus of his own.
Her first venture of significance was in the field
of translation. Prometheus Bound, and Miscellaneous
Poems, was published in her twenty-fourth year. The
poems were equally noticeable for faults and excel
lences, of which we have yet to speak. The transla
tion was at that time a unique effort for a young lady,
and good practice ; but abounded in grotesque pecul
iarities, and in fidelity did not approach the modern
standard. In riper years she freed it from her early
mannerism, and recast it in the shape now left to us,
" in expiation," she said, " of a sin of my youth, with
the sincerest application of my mature mind." This
later version of a most sublime tragedy is more poet
ical than any other of equal correctness, and has the
6
121
122
Her
der's.classi
A distinction between Landor's workmanship and
cism distinct
that
of Mrs. Browning was, that the former rarely
from Lan
used his classicism allegorically as a vehicle for mod
ern sentiment ; the latter, who did not write and think
as a Greek, goes to the antique for illustration of her
own faith and conceptions.
123
Prolonged
illness and
seclusion.
124
Critical
to us, enthusiastic, not closely written, but showing
prose-writings, 1842. unusual attainments and critical perception. In 1844
her thirty-fifth year she found strength for the
First collec collection of her writings in their first complete
tive edition
ofherpoems, edition, which opened with "A Drama of Exile."
1844.
These volumes, comprising the bulk of her works
during her maiden period, furnish the material and
occasion for some remarks upon her characteristics
as an English poet.
Her early
Her style, from the beginning, was strikingly origi
style.
nal, uneven to an extreme degree, equally remarkable
for defects and beauties, of which the former gradually
lessened and the latter grew more admirable as she
Disadvan advanced in years and experience. The disadvan
tages ofover- tages, no less than the advantages, of her education,
were apparent at the outset. She could not fail to
be affected by various master-minds, and when she
had outgrown one influence was drawn within another,
and so tossed about from world to world. " The
Seraphim," a diffuse, mystical passion-play, was an
echo of the ^Eschylean drama. Its meaning was
scarcely clear even to the author ; the rhythm is wild
and discordant; neither music nor meaning is thor
Shelley.
oughly beaten out. I have mentioned Shelley as one
with whom she was akin, is it that Shelley, dithyrambic as a votary of Cybele, was the most sexless,
as he was the most spiritual, of poets? There are
singers who spurn the earth, yet scarcely rise to the
heavens ; they utter a melodious, errant strain that
loses itself in a murmur, we know not how. Miss
Barrett's early verse was strangely combined of this
semi-musical delirium and obscurity, with an attempt
Her ballads. at the Greek dramatic form. Her ballads, on the
other hand, were a reflection of her English studies;
12$
126
127
"A Drama
of Exile"
1844.
128
LYRICAL EFFORTS.
129
Successful
lyrical
efforts.
HHmanitctrian poems.
130
A MATURE WOMAN.
13 1
Rotert
Browning
"Memo
rial," by
Theodore
Tilton, 1863.
III.
He is but a shallow critic who neglects to take
into his account of a woman's genius a factor repre
senting the master-element of Love. The chief event
in the life of Elizabeth Barrett was her marriage, and
causes readily suggest themselves which might deter
mine the most generous parent to oppose such a step
on her part. The dedication of her edition of 1844
shows how close was the relation existing between
her father and herself, and I am told by one who
knew her for many years, that Mr. Barrett " was a
133
Herfather'*
opposition
to the nup
tials.
Complete
woman/too
134
137
138
139
140
'AURORA LEIGH.'
141
142
Mrs.
Browning's
period of
decline.
Secondary
influence of
her married
life.
" Poems be
fore Con
gress" 186a
The Inde
pendent,"
144
"Last
Poems"
18O0-1861.
IV.
mate ofMrs,
Final
esti'
In a former chapter I wrote of " an inspired singer,
Browning's if there ever was one, all fire and air, her song
genius.
and soul alike devoted to liberty, aspiration, and love."
The career of this gifted woman has now been traced.
In conclusion, let us attempt to estimate her genius
and discover the position to be assigned to her
among contemporary poets.
Her art.
And first, with regard to her qualities as an
artist. She was thought to resemble Tennyson in
some of her early pieces, but this was a mistake, if
anything beyond form is to be considered. In read
Tennyson ing Tennyson you feel that he drives stately and
and Mrs.
Browning. thoroughbred horses, and has them always under
control ; that he could reach a higher speed at pleas
ure ; while Mrs. Browning's chargers, half-untamed,
145
146
147
148
149
Dud in
Florence,
June 29,
1861.
CHAPTER
V.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
152
ALFRED TENNYSON.
thanks," he does not move entirely contented within
the shadow that for the hour has crossed his tri
umphal path. A little poem, "The Flower," is the
expression of a genuine grievance : his plant, at first
novel and despised, grew into a superb flower of art,
was everywhere glorious and accepted, yet now is
again pronounced a weed because the seed is com
mon, and men weary of a beauty too familiar. The
petulance of these stanzas reveals a less edifying mat
ter, to wit, the failure of their author in submission
to the inevitable, the lack of a philosophy which he
is not slow to recommend to his fellows. If he verily
hears "the roll of the ages," as he has declared in
his answer to "A Spiteful Letter," why then so rest
ive? Why not recognize, even in his own case, the
benignity of a law which, as Cicero said of death,
must be a blessing because it is universal? He him
self has taught us, in the wisest language of our time,
that
" God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
No change, no progress. Better to decline, if need
be, upon some inferior grade, that all methods may
be tested. Ultimately, disgust of the false will bring
a reaction to something as good as the best which
has been known before.
Last of all, the world's true and enduring verdict.
In calmer moments the Laureate must needs reflect
that a future age will look back, measure him as he
is, and compare his works with those of his contem
poraries. To forestall, as far as may be, this stead
fast judgment of posterity, is the aim and service of
the critic. Let us separate ourselves from the adu
lation and envy of the moment, and search for the
153
II.
It seems to me that the only just estimate of Ten Tennyson
represents
nyson's position is that which declares him to be, his
era.
by eminence, the representative poet' of the recent
era. Not, like one or another of his compeers, repre
sentative of the melody, wisdom, passion, or other
partial phase of the era, but of the time itself, with its
diverse elements in harmonious conjunction. Years
have strengthened my belief that a future age will
iS4
ALFRED TENNYSON.
regard him, independently of his merits, as bearing
this relation to his period. In his verse he is as
truly " the glass of fashion and the mould of form "
of the Victorian generation in the nineteenth century
as Spenser was of the Elizabethan court, Milton of
the Protectorate, Pope of the reign of Queen Anne.
During his supremacy there have been few great
leaders, at the head of different schools, such as be
longed to the time of Byron, Wordsworth, and Keats.
His poetry has gathered all the elements which find
vital expression in the complex modern art.
Has the influence of Tennyson made the recent
British school, or has his genius itself been modified
and guided by the period ? It is the old question of
the river and the valley. The two have taken shape
together ; yet the beauty of Tennyson's verse was so
potent from the first, and has so increased in potency,
that we must pronounce him an independent genius,
certainly more than the mere creature of his sur
roundings.
Years ago, when he was yet comparatively unknown,
an American poet, himself finely gifted with the lyrical
ear, was so impressed by Tennyson's method, that,
" in perfect sincerity," he pronounced him " the noblest
poet that ever lived." If he had said " the noblest
artist," and confined this judgment to lyrists of the
English tongue, he possibly would have made no
exaggeration. Yet there have been artists with a less
conscious manner and a broader style. The Laureate
is always aware of what he is doing ; he is his own
daimon, the inspirer and controller of his own
utterances. He sings by note no less than by ear,
and follows a score of his own inditing. But, ac
knowledging his culture, we have no right to assume
A BORN ARTIST.
that his ear is not as fine as that of any poet who
gives voice with more careless rapture. His aver
age is higher than that of other English masters,
though there may be scarcely one who in special
flights has not excelled him. By Spencer's law of
progress, founded on the distribution of values, his
poetry is more eminent than most which has pre
ceded it.
I have inferred that the very success of Tennyson's
art has made it common in our eyes, and rendered
us incapable of fairly judging it. When a poet has
length of days, and sees his language a familiar por
tion of men's thoughts, he no longer can attract that
romantic interest with which the world regards a
genius freshly brought to hearing. Men forget that
he, too, was once new, unhackneyed, appetizing. But
recall the youth of Tennyson, and see how complete
the revolution with which he has, at least, been coeval,
and how distinct his music then seemed from every
thing which had gone before.
He began as a metrical artist, pure and simple,
and with a feeling perfectly unique, at a long re
move, even, from that of so absolute an artist as was
John Keats. He had very little notion beyond the
production of rhythm, melody, color, and other poetic
effects. Instinct led him to construct his machinery
before essaying to build. Many have discerned, in
his youthful pieces, the influence of Wordsworth and
Keats, but no less that of the Italian poets, and of
the early English balladists. I shall hereafter revert
to " Oriana," " Mariana," and " The Lady of Shalott,"
as work that in its kind is fully up to the best of
those Pre-Raphaelites who, by some arrest of devel
opment, stop precisely where Tennyson made his
155
Hindrance*
to correct
apprecia
tion.
A born
artist.
The PreRaphaeliies.
ALFRED TENNYSON
second step forward, and censure him for having gone
beyond them.
Meaningless as are the opening melodies of his col
lected verse, how delicious they once seemed, as a
change from even the greatest productions which then
held the public ear. Here was something of a new
kind ! The charm was legitimate. Tennyson's im
mediate predecessors were so fully occupied with the
mass of a composition that they slighted details :
what beauty they displayed was not of the parts, but
of the whole. Now, in all arts, the natural advance
is from detail to general effect. How seldom those
who begin with a broad treatment, which apes ma
turity, acquire subsequently the minor graces that
alone can finish the perfect work ! By comparison
of the late and early writings of great English poets,
Shakespeare and Milton, one observes the pro
cess of healthful growth. Tennyson proved his kin
dred genius by this instinctive study of details in his
immature verses. In marked contrast to his fellows,
and to every predecessor but Keats, " that strong,
excepted soul," he seemed to perceive from the
outset, that Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts :
the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach
true excellence; that it has its technical secrets, its
mysterious lowly paths that reach to aerial outlooks,
and this no less than sculpture, painting, music,
or architecture, but even more. He devoted himself,
with the eager spirit of youth, to mastering this ex
quisite art, and wreaked his thoughts upon expres
sion, for the expression's sake. And what else should
one attempt, with small experiences, little concern
for the real world, and less observation of it ? He
had dreams rather than thoughts ; but was at the
A TRANSITION PERIOD.
most sensitive period of life with regard to rhythm,
157
color, and form. In youth feeling is indeed " deeper
than all thought," and responds divinely to every
sensuous confrontment with the presence of beauty.
It is difficult now to realize how chaotic Sras the A transition
period.
notion of art among English verse-makers atTthe be 1820- 1830.
ginning of Tennyson's career. Not even the example
of Keats had taught the needful lesson, and I look
upon his successor's early efforts as of no small
importance. These were dreamy experiments in metre
and word-painting, and spontaneous after their kind.
Readers sought not to analyze their meaning and
grace. The significance of art has since become so
well understood, and such results have been attained,
that " Claribel," " Lilian," " The Merman," " The Dy
ing Swan," " The Owl," etc., seem slight enough to
us now ; and even then the affectation pervading
them, which was merely the error of a poetic soul
groping for its true form of expression, repelled men
of severe and established tastes ; but to the neophyte Charm of
Tennyson's
they had the charm of sighing winds and babbling early lyrics.
waters, a wonder of luxury and weirdness, inexpres
sible, not to be effaced. How we lay on the grass, in
June, and softly read them from the white page !
To this day what lyrics better hold their own than
" Mariana " and the " Recollections of the Arabian
Nights." In these pieces, however, as in the crude
" Poems,
yet picturesque " Ode to Memory," the poet exhibited chiefly
some distinctness of theme and motive, and, in a Lyrical"
word, seemed to feel that he had something to ex 1830.
press, if it were but the arabesque shadows of his
fancy-laden dreams. Of a mass of lyrics, sonnets,
Poems by
and other metrical essays, published theretofore, "Two
Brothers"
1827.
some contained in the Poems by Two Brothers, and
ALFRED TENNYSON.
others in the original volume of 1830, I say noth
ing, for they show little of the purpose that charac
terizes the few early pieces which our poet himself
retains in his collected works. One of them, " Hero
and Leander," is too good in its way to be discarded ;
the greater number are juvenile, often imitative, and
the excellent judgment of Tennyson is shown by his
rejection of all that have no true position in his
lyrical rise and progress.
The volume of 1832, which began with " The Lady
of Shalott," and contained " Eleanore," " Margaret,"
" The Miller's Daughter," " The Palace of Art," " The
May Queen," " Fatima," "The Lotos-Eaters," and
" A Dream of Fair Women," was published in his
twenty-second year. All in all, a more original and
beautiful volume of minor poetry never was added
to our literature. The Tennysonian manner here was
clearly developed, largely pruned of mannerisms.
The command of delicious metres ; the rhythmic susurrus of stanzas whose every word is as needful and
studied as the flower or scroll of ornamental archi
tecture, yet so much an interlaced portion of the
whole, that the special device is forgotten in the
general excellence ; the effect of color, of that music
which is a passion in itself, of the scenic pictures
which are the counterparts of changeful emotions ;
all are here, and the poet's work is the epitome of
every mode in art. Even if these lyrics and idyls had
expressed nothing, they were of priceless value as
guides to the renaissance of beauty. Thenceforward
slovenly work was impossible, subject to instant re
buke by contrast. The force of metrical elegance
made its way and carried everything before it. From
this day Tennyson confessedly took his place at the
159
The "artschool."
Tendency
ofthe pott's
genius.
See Chapter
VI.
Classicism.
Purely Eng
lish idyls.
l6o
"Poems?
1S42.
A treasury
ofrepresent
ative poems.
Blank-verse.
Previous
styles.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
cious work, until the author's fame and influence had
so extended that he was encouraged to print the vol
ume of 1842, wherein he first gave the name of idyls
to poems of the class that has brought him a distinc
tive reputation.
At the present day, were this volume to be lost,
we possibly should be deprived of a larger specific
variety of Tennyson's most admired poems than is
contained in any other of his successive ventures. It
is an assortment of representative poems. To an art
more restrained and natural we here find wedded a
living soul. The poet has convictions : he is not a
pupil, but a master, and reaches intellectual greatness.
His verses still bewitch youths and artists by their
sentiments and beauty, but their thought takes hold of
thinkers and men of the world. He has learned not
only that art, when followed for its own sake, is al
luring, but that, when used as a means of expressing
what cannot otherwise be quite revealed, it becomes
seraphic. We could spare, rather than this collection,
much which he has since given us : possibly " Maud,"
without doubt, idyls like "The Golden Supper" and
"Aylmer's Field." Look at the material structure of
the poetry. Here, at last, we observe the ripening
of that blank-verse which had been suggested in the
" CEnone." Consider Tennyson's handling of this
measure, the domino of a poetaster, the state gar
ment of a lofty poet. It must be owned that he now
enriched it by a style entirely his own, and as welldefined as those already established. Foremost of
the latter was the Elizabethan, marked by freedom
and power, and never excelled for dramatic compo
sition. Next, the Miltonic or Anglo-Epic, with its
sonorous grandeur and stately Roman syntax, of which
161
1 62
ALFRED TENNYSON.
The other style of Tennyson's blank-verse is found
in his purely idyllic pieces, "The Gardener's Daugh
ter," "Dora," "Godiva," and, upon a lower plane,
such eclogues as "Audley Court" and "Edwin Mor
ris." " St. Simeon Stylites " and " Ulysses " have each
a special manner. In the first-named group, the poet
brought to completeness the Victorian idyllic verse.
The three are models from which he could not ad
vance : in surpassing beauty and naturalness une
qualled, I say, by many of his later efforts. What
Crabbe essayed in a homely fashion, now, at the
touch of a finer artist, became the perfection of rural,
idyllic tenderness. " Dora " is like a Hebrew pasto
ral, the paragon of its kind, with not a quotable de
tail, a line too much or too little, but faultless as a
whole. Who can read it without tears ? " Godiva "
and " The Gardener's Daughter " demand no less
praise for descriptive felicity of another kind. But,
for virile grandeur and astonishingly compact expres
sion, there is no blank-verse poem, equally restricted
as to length, that approaches the " Ulysses " : concep
tion, imagery, and thought are royally imaginative,
and the assured hand is Tennyson's throughout.
I reserve for later discussion the poet's general
characteristics, fairly displayed in this volume. The
great feature is its comprehensive range; it includes
a finished specimen of every kind of poetry within
the author's power to essay. The variety is surpris
ing, and the novelty was no less so at the date of
its appearance. Here is "The Talking Oak," that
marvel of grace and fancy, the nonpareil of sustained
lyrics in quatrain verse ; as exquisite in filigree-work
as "The Rape of the Lock," with an airy beauty and
rippling flow, compared with which the motion of
163
"Locksley
Noli."
Ballads.
Sopgs.
164
ALFRED TENNYSON.
less idealization of its theme. "Sir Galahad" must
be recited by a clarion voice, ere one can fully appre
ciate the sounding melody, the knightly, heroic ring.
The
Such
poetis has
the never
excellence,
chanted
anda such
morethe
ennobling
unusual strain.
range
of a volume in which every department of poetry,
except the dramatic, is exhibited in great perfection,
if not at the most imaginative height. To the au
thor's students it is a favorite among his books, as
the one that fairly represents his composite genius.
It powerfully affected the rising group of poets, giv
ing their work a tendency which established its gen
eral
There
character
comesfora the
timeensuing
in the thirty
life ofyears.
every aspiring
artist, when, if he be a painter, he tires of painting
cabinet-pictures, however much they satisfy his ad
mirers ; if a poet, he says to himself : " Enough of
lyrics and idyls ; let me essay a masterpiece, a sus
tained production, that shall bear to my former work
the relation which an opera or oratorio bears to a
composer's sonatas and canzonets." It may be that
some feeling of this kind impelled Tennyson to write
The Princess, the theme and story of which are both
his own invention. At that time he had not learned
the truth of Emerson's maxim that " Tradition sup
plies a better fable than any invention can " ; and
that it is as well for a poet to borrow from history
or romance a tale made ready to his hands, and
which his genius must transfigure. The poem is, as
he entitled it, " A Medley," constructed of ancient
and modern materials, a show of mediaeval pomp
and movement, observed through an atmosphere of
latter-day thought and emotion ; so varying, withal,
in the scenes and language of its successive parts,
the princess:
165
i66
ALFRED TENNYSON.
are herein contained, and the ending of each canto
is an effective piece of art.
The tournament scene, at the close of the fifth
book, is the most vehement and rapid passage to be
found in the whole range of Tennyson's poetry. By
an approach to the Homeric swiftness, it presents a
contrast to the laborious and faulty movement of
much of his narrative verse. The songs, added in
the second edition of this poem, reach the high-water
mark of lyrical composition. Few will deny that,
taken together, the five melodies : " As through the
land," " Sweet and low," " The splendor falls on
castle walls," " Home they brought her warrior dead,"
and " Ask me no more ! " that these constitute the
finest group of songs produced in our century ; and
the third, known as the " Bugle Song," seems to many
the most perfect English lyric since the time of Shake
speare. In " The Princess " we also find Tennyson's
most successful studies upon the model of the Theocritan isometric verse. He was the first to enrich
our poetry with this class of melodies, for the bur
lesque pastorals of the eighteenth century need not
be considered. Not one of the blank-verse songs in
his Arthurian epic equals in structure or feeling the
" Tears, idle tears," and " O swallow, swallow, flying,
flying south ! " Again, what witchery of landscape
and action ; what fair women and brave men, who,
if they be somewhat stagy and traditional, at least
are more sharply defined than the actors in our poet's
other romances ! Besides, " The Princess " has a dis
tinct purpose, the illustration of woman's struggles,
aspirations, and proper sphere ; and the conclusion
is one wherewith the instincts of cultured people are
so thoroughly in accord, that some are used to an
Tennyson's
intellectual
growik and
advantage.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Tennyson ; if you miss Browning's psychology, you
find a more varied analysis, qualified by wise restraint.
His intellectual growth has steadily progressed, and
is reflected in the nature of his successive poems.
At the age of forty a man, blessed with a sound
mind in a sound body, should reach the maturity of
his intellectual power. At such a period Tennyson
produced In Memoriam, his most characteristic and
significant work : not so ambitious as his epic of
King Arthur, but more distinctively a poem of this
century, and displaying the author's genius in a sub
jective form. In it are concentrated his wisest re
flections upon life, death, and immortality, the worlds
within and without, while the whole song is so largely
uttered, and so pervaded with the singer's manner,
that any isolated line is recognized at once. This
work stands by itself : none can essay another upon
its model, without yielding every claim to personality
and at the risk of an inferiority that would be ap
palling. The strength of Tennyson's intellect has full
sweep in this elegiac poem, the great threnody of
our language, by virtue of unique conception and
power. " Lycidas," with its primrose beauty and
varied lofty flights, is but the extension of a theme
set by Moschus and Bion. Shelley, in " Adonais,"
despite his spiritual ecstasy and splendor of lament,
followed the same masters, yes, and took his land
scape and imagery from distant climes. Swinburne's
dirge for Baudelaire is a wonder of melody ; nor do
we forget the " Thyrsis " of Arnold, and other modern
ventures in a direction where the sweet and absolute
solemnity of the Saxon tongue is most apparent.
Still, as an original and intellectual production, " In
Memoriam " is beyond them all : and a more impor
'IN memoriam:
tant, though possibly no more enduring, creation of
rhythmic art.
8 form of this work deserves attention.
The metrical
The author's choice of the transposed-quatrain verse
was a piece of good fortune. Its hymnal quality,
finely exemplified in the opening prayer, is always
impressive, and, although a monotone, no more mo
notonous than the sounds of nature,
the murmur
of ocean, the soughing of the mountain pines. Were
" In Memoriam " written in direct quatrains, I think
the effect would grow to be unendurable. The work
as a whole is built up of successive lyrics, each ex
pressing a single phase of the poet's sorrow-brooding
thought ; and here again is followed the method of
nature, which evolves cell after cell, and, joining each
to each, constructs the sentient organization. But
Tennyson's art-instincts are always perfect ; he does
the fitting thing, and rarely seeks through eccentric
andAscurious
to scenery,
movements
imagery,
to and
attract
general
the popular
treatment,
regard.
" In
Memoriam " is eminently a British poem. The grave,
majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an
organ, yet acts as a brake on undue spasmodic out
bursts of discordant grief. A steady, yet varying
marche funebre ; a sense of passion held in check, of
reserved elegiac power. For the strain is everywhere
calm, even in rehearsing a bygone violence of emo
tion, along its passage from woe to desolation, and
anon, by tranquil stages, to reverence, thought, aspira
tion, endurance, hope. On sea and shore the ele
ments are calm ; even the wild winds and snows of
winter are brought in hand, and made subservient, as
the bells ring out the dying year, to the new birth of
Nature and the sure purpose of eternal God.
/is metrical
and stanzaic
arrangement.
A thorough'
ly national
Poem.
Rhythmic
grandeur
and solem
nity.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Critical objections are urged against " In Memoriam " ; mostly, in my opinion, such as more fitly
apply to poems upon a lower grade. It is said to
present a confusion of religion and skepticism, an
attempt to reconcile faith and knowledge, to blend
the feeling of Dante with that of Lucretius ; but, if
this be so, the author only follows the example of
his generation, and the more faithfully gives voice to
its spiritual questionings. Even here he is accused
of " idealizing the thoughts of his contemporaries " ;
to which we rejoin, in the words of another, " that
great writers do not anticipate the thought of their
age ; they but anticipate its expression." His scien
tific language and imagery are censured also, but do
not his efforts in this direction, tentative as they are,
constitute a merit? Failing, as others have failed, to
reconcile poetry and metaphysics, he succeeds better
in speculations inspired by the revelations of lens
and laboratory. Why should not such facts be taken
into account? The phenomenal stage of art is pass
ing away, and all things, even poetic diction and
metaphor, must endure a change. It is absurd to
think that a man like Tennyson will rest content with
ignoring or misstating what has become every-day
knowledge. The spiritual domain is still the poet's
own ; but let his illustrations be derived from living
truths, rather than from the worn and ancient fables
of the pastoral age. A certain writer declares that
Tennyson shows sound sense instead of imaginative
power. Not only sense, methinks, but "the sanity
of true genius " ; and the Strephon-and-Chloe singers
must change their tune, or be left without a hearing.
A charge requiring more serious consideration is that
the sorrow of " In Memoriam " is but food for thought,
'in memoriam:
a passion of the head, not of the heart. The poet,
however, has reached a philosophical zenith of his
life, far above ignoble weakness, and performs the
office which an enfranchised spirit might well require
of him ; building a mausoleum of immortal verse,
conceiving his friend as no longer dead, but as hav
ing solved the mysteries they so often have discussed
together. If there is didacticism in the poem, it is a
teaching which leads ad astra, by a path strictly within
the province of an elegiac minstrel's song.
For the rest, "In Memoriam" is a serene and
truthful panorama of refined experiences ; filled with
pictures of gentle, scholastic life, and of English
scenery through all the changes of a rolling year ;
expressing, moreover, the thoughts engendered by
these changes. When too sombre, it is lightened by
sweet reminiscences ; when too light, recalled to grief
by stanzas that have the deep solemnity of a passing
bell. Among its author's productions it is the one
most valued by educated and professional readers.
Recently, a number of authors having been asked
to name three leading poems of this century which
they would most prefer to have written, each gave
"In Memoriam" either the first or second place
upon his list. Obviously it is not a work to read
at a sitting, nor to take up in every mood, but one
in which we are sure to find something of worth in
every stanza. It contains more notable sayings than
any other of Tennyson's poems. The wisdom, yearn
ings, and aspirations of a noble mind are here; curi
ous reasoning, for once, is not out of place ; the poet's
imagination, shut in upon itself, strives to irradiate
with inward light the mystic problems of life. At
the close, Nature's eternal miracle is made symbolic
171
Wisdom
spiritualized
h grief.
General
quality of
this noble
Admired by
men oflet
ters.
172
ALFRED TENNYSON.
of the soul's palingenesis, and the tender and beau
tiful marriage-lay tranquillizes the reader with the
thought of the dear common joys which are the heri
tage of every living kind.
III.
In the year 1850 Tennyson received the laurel,
and almost immediately was called upon by the
national sentiment to exercise the functions of his
poetic office. The "Ode on the Death of the Duke
of Wellington " was the first, and remains the most
ambitious, of his patriotic lyrics. This tribute to the
" last great Englishman " may fairly be pronounced
equal to the occasion ; a respectable performance for
Tennyson, a strong one for another poet. None but
a great artist could have written it, yet it scarcely
is a great poem, and certainly, though Tennyson's
most important ode, is not comparable with his pred
ecessor's lofty discourse upon the "Intimations of
Immortality." Several passages have become folkwords, such as " O good gray head which all men
knew ! " and
" This is England's greatest son,
He that gain'd a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun ! "
but the ode, upon the whole, is labored, built up of
high-sounding lines and refrains after the manner
of Dryden, in which rhetoric often is substituted for
imagination and richness of thought.
The Laureate never has been at ease in handling
events of the day. To his brooding and essentially
poetic nature such matters seem of no more moment,
beside the mysteries of eternal beauty and truth,
173
174
ALFRED TENNYSON.
cheap satire, and conspicuous for affectations un
worthy of the poet. The pity of it was that this
production appeared when Tennyson suddenly had
become fashionable, in England and America, through
his accession to the laureate's honors, and for this
reason, as well as for its theme and eccentric qual
ities, had a wider reading than his previous works :
not only among the masses, to whom the other vol
umes had been sealed books, but among thoughtful
people, who now first made the poet's acquaintance
and received " Maud " as the foremost example of
his style. First impressions are lasting, and to this
day Tennyson is deemed, by many of the latter
class, an apostle of tinsel and affectation. In our
own country especially, his popular reputation began
with " Maud," a work which, for lack of construc
tive beauty, is the opposite of his other narrative
poems.
A pleasing feature of the volume of 1855 was an
idyl, " The Brook," which is charmingly finished and
contains a swift and rippling inter-lyric delightful to
every reader. A winsome, novel stanzaic form, possi
bly of the Laureate's own invention, is to be found
in "The Daisy," and in the Horatian lines to his
friend Maurice. Here, too, is much of that felicitous
word-painting for which he is deservedly renowned :
" O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,
The height, the space, the gloom, the glory !
A mount of marble, a hundred spires !
" How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air."
-
" Idyls of
the King,"
S59-7*.
A n epic of
ideal chiv
alry.
176
ALFRED TENNYSON.
it is more evenly sustained and has no long prosaic
passages ; while " Paradise Lost " is justly declared
to be a work of superhuman genius impoverished by
dreary wastes of theology.
Tennyson early struck a vein in the black-letter
compilation of Sir Thomas Malory. A tale was
already fashioned to his use, from which to derive
his legends and exalt them with whatsoever spiritual
meanings they might require. The picturesque qual
ities of the old Anglo-Breton romance fascinated his
youth, and found lyrical expression in the weird,
melodious, Pre-Raphaelite ballad of " The Lady of
Shalott." The young poet here attained great ex
cellence in a walk which Rossetti and his pupils
have since chosen for their own, and his early
studies are on a level with some of their master
pieces. Until recently, they have made success in
this direction a special aim, while Tennyson would
not be restricted even to such attractive work, but
went steadily on, claiming the entire field of im
aginative research as the poet's own.
His strong allegorical bent, evinced in that early
lyric, was heightened by analysis of the Arthurian
legends. The English caught this tendency, long
since, from the Italians ; the Elizabethan era was
so charged with it, that the courtiers of the Virgin
Queen hardly could speak without a mystical doublemeaning, for an illustration of which read the
dialogue in certain portions of Kingsley's " Amyas
Leigh." From Sidney and Spenser down to plain John
Bunyan, and even to Sir Walter Scott, allegory is a
natural English mode ; and, while adopted in several
of Tennyson's pieces, it finds a special development
in the "Idyls of the King."
1/7
i78
ALFRED TENNYSON.
at an early subsequent date, he has not advanced in
freshness and imagination. His greatest achievement
still is that noblest of modern episodes, the canto
entitled " Guinevere," surcharged with tragic pathos
and high dramatic power. He never has so reached
the passio vera of the early dramatists as in this im
posing scene. There is nothing finer in modern verse
than the interview between Arthur and his remorseful
wife ; nothing loftier than the passage beginning
" Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives : do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved ?
0 golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing ! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee
1 cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,
But Lancelot's : nay, they never were the King's."
When this idyl first appeared, what elevation seized
upon the soul of every poetic aspirant as he read
it ! What despair of rivalling a passion so imagina
tive, an art so majestic and supreme !
I have referred to the Homeric manner of the
fragment now made the conclusion of the epic, and
entitled " The Passing of Arthur." The magnificent
battle-piece, by which it is here preluded, is so dif
ferent in manner from the original " Morte d'Arthur,"
that both are injured by their juxtaposition. The
canto, moreover, plainly weakens at the close. The
epic properly ends with the line,
The poet's
"Andsense
on theofmere
proportion
the wailing here
died away."
works injuri
179
" Garetk.
and Lynelte."
Receni ft
Tennyson's
English.
i8o
ALFRED TENNYSON.
'ENOCH ARDEN?
During the growth of this epic he has, however,
produced a few other poems which take high rank.
Of these, Enoch Arden, in sustained beauty, bears
a relation to his shorter pastorals similar to that
existing between the epic and his minor heroic-verse.
Coming within the average range of emotions, it
has been very widely read. This poem is in its
author's purest idyllic style ; noticeable for evenness
of tone, clearness of diction, successful description
of coast and ocean, finally, for the loveliness and
fidelity of its genre scenes. In study of a class
below him, hearts "centred in the sphere of com
mon duties," the Laureate is unsurpassed. A far
different creation is " Lucretius," a brooding charac
ter with which Tennyson is quite in sympathy. He
has invested it with a certain restless grandeur, yet
hardly, I should conceive, wrought out the work he
thought possible when the theme was first suggested
to his mind. He found its limits and contented
himself with portraying a gloomy, isolated figure,
as strongly and subtly as Browning would have
drawn it, and with a terseness beyond the latter's
art.
I have already spoken of " The Golden Supper "
and "Aylmer's Field." Among other and better
pieces, " Sea-Dreams," a poem of measureless
satire and much idyllic beauty, " Tithonus," " The
Voyage," a fine lyric, and such masterly ballads
as "The Victor," "The Captor," and "The SailorBoy," will not be forgotten. It is worth while to
observe the few dialect poems which Tennyson has
written, thrown off, as if merely to show that he
could be easily first in a field which he resigns to
others. The " Northern Farmer " ballads, old and
l8l
"Enoch
Arden, and
Other
Poems"
1S64.
"Lucre
tius"
Miscellane
ous pieces.
Dialed
poems, etc.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
new, axe the best English dialect studies of our
time. Among his minor diversions are light oc
casional pieces and some experiments in classical
measures, often finished sketches, germs of works
to which he has given no further attention. He
saw that " Boadicea " offered no such field as that
afforded by the Arthurian legends, and wisely gave
it over. Again, he unquestionably could have made
a great blank-verse translation of Homer, but chose
the better part in devoting his middle life solely
to creative work. The world can ill afford to lose
a poet's golden prime in the labors of a translator.
IV.
In whatsoever light we examine the characteristics
of the Laureate's genius, the complete and even
balance of his poetry is from first to last con
spicuous. It exhibits that just combination of lyrical
elements which makes a symphony, wherein it is
difficult to say what quality predominates. Review
ing minor poets, we think this one attractive for
the wild flavor of his unstudied verse ; another, for
the gush and music of his songs ; a third, for idyllic
sweetness or tragic power ; but in Tennyson we
have the strong repose of art, whereof as of the
perfection of nature the world is slow to tire.
It has become conventional, but remember that
nothing endures to the point of conventionalism
which is not based upon lasting rules ; that it once
was new and refreshing, and is sure, in future days,
to regain the early charm.
The one thing longed for, and most frequently
missed, in work of this kind, is the very wilding
183
1 84
ALFRED TENNYSON.
greater excess.
A question recently has been
mooted, whether Milton, were he living in our time,
could write " Paradise Lost " ? A no less interesting
conjecture would relate to the kind of poetry that
we should have from Pope, were he of Tennyson's
Points of generation. The physical traits of the two men
resemblance
being so utterly at variance, no doubt many will
between
Tennyson scout my suggestion that the verse of the former
and Pope.
might closely resemble that of the latter. Pope
excelled in qualities which, mutatis mutandis, are
noticeable in Tennyson : finish and minuteness of
detail, and the elevation of common things to fanci
ful beauty. Here, again, compare " The Rape of
the Lock " with " The Sleeping Beauty," and espe
cially with " The Talking Oak." A faculty of " say
ing things," which, in Pope (his being a cruder age,
when persons needed that homely wisdom which
seems trite enough in our day), became didacticism,
in Tennyson is sweetly natural and poetic. Since
the period of the " Essay on Man," from what writer
can you cull so many wise and fine , proverbial
phrases as from the poet who says :
"'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all " ;
"Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood " ;
"There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds";
who puts the theory of evolution in a couplet when
he sings of
" one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves";
" Old age hath yet his honor and his toil " ;
from whom else so many of these proverbs, which are
not isolated, but, as in Pope's works, recur by tens
and scores ? Curious felicities of verse :
" Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere " ;
lines which record the most exquisite thrills of life :
" Our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips " ;
and unforgotten similes :
"Dear as remembered kisses after death";
such beauties as these occur in multitudes, and lit
erally make up the body of the Laureate's song. In
feeling, imagination, largeness of heart and head, the
diminutive satirist can enter into no comparison with
our poet, but the situation is otherwise as respects
finish and moralistic power. The essence of Pope's
art was false, because it was the product of a false
age ; Dryden had been his guide to the stilted hero
ics of the French school, which so long afterwards,
Pope lending them such authority, stalked through
English verse. In this day he would, like Tennyson,
have found his masters among the early, natural
poets, or obtained, in a direct manner, what classi
cism he needed, and not through Gallic filters. Yet
it is not long since I heard an eminent man laud
ing Pope for the very characteristics which, as here
ALFRED TENNYSON.
shown, are conspicuous in Tennyson ; and decrying
the latter, misled by that chance acquaintance with
his poetry which is worse than no acquaintance at
all. In suggestivcness Pope was singularly deficient :
his constructive faculty so prevailed, that he left
nothing to the reader's fancy, but explained to the
end. He had no such moods as those evoked by
" Tears, idle tears," and " Break, break, break ! " and
therefore his verses never suggest them. In irony
Tennyson would equal Pope, had he not risen above
it. The man who wrote " The New Timon and the
Poets," and afterwards rebuked himself for so doing,
could write another " Dunciad," or, without resort to
any models, a still more polished and bitter satire of
his own.
Supreme
Tennyson's original and fastidious art is of itself a
and complex
modern art. theme for an essay. The poet who studies it may
well despair ; he never can excel it, and is tempted
to a reactionary carelessness, trusting to make his
individuality felt thereby. Its strength is that of per
fection ; its weakness, the over-perfection which marks
a still-life painter. Here is the absolute sway of
metre, compelling every rhyme and measure needful
to the thought ; here are sinuous alliterations, unique
and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights and
falls, the glory of sound and color, everywhere pres
ent, or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. Art
so complex was not possible until centuries of litera
ture had passed, and an artist could overlook the
field, essay each style, and evolve a metrical result,
which should be to that of earlier periods what the
music of Meyerbeer and Rossini is to the narrower
range of Piccini or Gluck. In Tennyson's artistic
conscientiousness, he is the opposite of that com
i88
ALFRED TENNYSON.
HIS LIMITATIONS.
ondly, by failure, until within a very recent date, to
produce dramatic work of the genuine kind.
With respect to his style, it may be said that
Tennyson while objective in the variety of his
themes, and in ability to separate his own experi
ence from their development is the most sub
jective of poets in the distinguishable flavor of his
language and rhythm. Reading him you might not
guess his life and story, the reverse of which is
true with Byron, whom I take as a familiar example
of the subjective in literature ; nevertheless, it is im
possible to observe a single line, or an entire speci
men, of the Laureate's poems, without feeling that
they are in the handwriting of the same master, or
of some disciple who has caught his fascinating and
contagious style.
I speak of his second limitation, with a full
knowledge that many claim a dramatic crown for the
author of the " Northern Farmer," " Tithonus," " St.
Simeon Stylites," for the poet of the Round
Table and the Holy Grail. But isolated studies
are not sufficient : a group of living men and women
is necessary to broad dramatic action. Tennyson
forces his characters to adapt themselves to pre
conceived, statuesque ideals of his own. His chief
success is with those in humble life ; in " Enoch
Arden," and elsewhere, he has very sweetly depicted
the emotions of simple natures, rarely at a sublime
height or depth of passion. He also draws with
an easy touch occasionally found in the prose of
the author of " The Warden " a group of sturdy,
refined, comfortable fellows upon their daily ram
bles, British and modern in their wholesome talk.
But the true dramatist instinctively portrays either
189
190
Effect ofa
secluded life.
Cp. " Poets
ofA mer
lea " ; pp.
155, 156.
His ideal
personages.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
exceptional characters, or ordinary beings in im
passioned and extraordinary moods. This Tennyson
rarely essays to do, except when presenting imagi
nary heroes of a visioned past. A great master of
contemplative, descriptive, or lyrical verse, he falls
short in that combination of action and passion which
we call dramatic, and often gives us a series of mar
vellous tableaux in lieu of exalted speech and deeds.
This lack of individuality is somewhat due to
the influence of the period ; largely, also, to the
habit of solitude which the poet has chosen to in
dulge. His life has been passed among his books
or in the seclusion of rural haunts ; when in town,
in the company of a few chosen friends. This has
heightened his tendency to reverie, and unfitted him
to distinguish sharply between men and men. The
great novelists of our day, who correspond to the
dramatists of a past age, have plunged into the roar
of cities and the thick of the crowd, touching people
closely and on every side. It must be owned that
we do not find in their works that close knowledge
of inanimate nature for which Tennyson has fore
gone "the proper study of mankind." The one
seems to curtail the other, Wordsworth's writings
being another example in point. " Men my brothers,
men the workers," sings the Laureate, and is pleased
to watch and encourage them, but always from afar.
With few exceptions, then, his most poetical types
of men and women are not substantial beings, but
beautiful shadows, which, like the phantoms of a
stereopticon, dissolve if you examine them too long
and closely. His knights are the old bequest of chiv
alry, yet how stalwart and picturesque ! His early
ideals of women are cathedral-paintings, scarcely
191
ALFRED TENNYSON.
sees that "the thoughts of men are widened with the
process of the suns," but is not the man to lead a
reform, or to disturb the pleasant conditions in which
his lot is cast. No personal wrong has allied him
to the oppressed and struggling classes, yet he is
too intellectual not to perceive that such wrongs
exist. It must be remembered that Shakespeare and
Goethe were no more heroic. Just so with his re
ligious attitude. Reverence for beauty would of itself
dispose him to love the ivied Church, with all its
art, and faith, and ancestral legendary associations ;
and therefore, while amply reflecting in his verse the
doubt and disquiet of the age, his tranquil sense of
order, together with the failure of iconoclasts to sub
stitute any creed for that which they are breaking
down, have brought him to the position of stanch Sir
William Petty (pbiit 1687), who wrote in his will these
memorable words : " As for religion, I die in the
profession of that Faith, and in the practice of such
Worship, as I find established by the law of my
country, not being able to believe what I myself
please, nor to worship God better than by doing as
I would be done unto, and observing the laws of
my country, and expressing my love and honor unto
Almighty God by such signs and tokens as are un
derstood to be such by the people with whom I live,
God knowing my heart even without any at all."
So far as the " religion of art " is concerned, Ten
nyson is the most conscientious of devotees. Through
out his work we find a pure and thoughtful purpose,
abhorrent of the mere licentious passion for beauty,
"such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim."
193
//is verse
conformed
to modern
progress and
discovery.
is
Words
worth upon
thefuture
relations of
Science and
Poetry.
See also
page 15.
194
Taine's
analysis :
ALFRED TENNYSON.
into the midst of the objects of the science itself.
The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the bot
anist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the
poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if
the time should ever come when these things shall be
\familiar to us, ami the relations under which they are
contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences
shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoy
ing and suffering beings. If the time should ever come
when what is now called science, thus familiarized to
men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form offlesh
and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the
transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus pro
duced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of
man."
It is not unlikely that Tennyson was early im
pressed by these profound observations ; at all events,
he has seen the truths of science becoming familiar
"to the general," and has governed his art accord
ingly. The poet and man of science have a common
ground, since few discoveries are made without the
exercise of the poet's special gift, the imagination.
This faculty is required to enable a child to compre
hend any scientific paradox : for instance, that of the
rotation of the Earth upon its axis. The imagination
of an investigator advances from one step to another,
and thus, in a certain sense, the mental processes of
a Milton and a Newton are near akin. A plod
ding, didactic intellect is not strictly scientific ; nor
will great poetry ever spring from a merely phan
tasmal brain: "best bard because the wisest," sings
the poet.
M. Taine's chapter upon Tennyson shows an intelli
gent perception of the Laureate's relations to his time,
its defects.
De Musset.
wherein
critic has
succeeded-
196
ALFRED TENNYSON.
" Above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining " ;
have made him a wiser judge of the poet's intellect
ual and imaginative position. In this matter he is
like a deaf man watching a battle, undisturbed by
the bewildering power of sound. His remarks upon
the limitations of a " comfortable, luxurious, English "
muse are not withouj reason ; all in all, he has a
just idea of Tennyson's representative attitude in the
present state of British thought and art. He has
laid too little stress upon the difference between
Tennyson and Byron, by observing which we gather
a clearer estimate of the former's genius than in any
other way.
Tennyson is the antithesis of Byron, in both the
form and spirit of his song. The Georgian poet,
with all the glow of genius, constantly giving utter
ance to condensed and powerful expressions, never
attempted condensation in his general style ; there
was nothing he so little cared for ; his inspiration
must have full flow and break through every barrier ;
it was the roaring of a mighty wind, the current of
a great river, prone to overflow, and often to spread
thinly and unevenly upon the shoals and lowlands.
Tennyson, though composing an extended work, seeks
the utmost terseness of expression ; howsoever com
posite his verse, it is tightly packed and cemented,
and decorated to repletion with fretwork and precious
stones ; nothing is neglected, nothing wasted, nothing
misapplied. You cannot take out a word or sentence
without marring the structure, nor can you find a
blemish ; while much might be profitably omitted
from Byron's longer poems, and their blemishes are
frequent as the beauties. Prolixity, diffuseness, were
197
198
ALFRED TENNYSON.
her more objectively. He contemplates things with
out identifying himself with them. In these respects,
Tennyson and Byron not only are antithetical, but
each above his contemporaries reflect the an
tithetical qualities of their respective eras. In con
clusion, it should be noticed that, although each has
had a host of followers, Byron affected the spirit of
the people at large, rather than the style of his
brother poets ; while Tennyson, through the force of
his admirable art, has affected the poets themselves,
who do not sympathize with his spirit, but show
themselves awed and instructed by his mastery of
technics. Byron's influence was national ; that of
Tennyson
If the temperament
is professional
of to
Byron
an unprecedented
or of Mrs. Browning
degree.
may be pronounced an ideal poetic temperament,
certainly the career of Tennyson is an ideal poetic
career. He has been less in contact with the rude
outer world than any poet save Wordsworth ; again,
while even the latter wrote much prose, Tennyson,
" having wherewithal," and consecrating his life whol
ly to metrical art, has been a verse-maker and noth
ing else. He has passed through all gradations,
from obscurity to laurelled fame ; beginning with the
lightest lyrics, he has lived to write the one success
ful epic of the last two hundred years ; and though
he well might rest content, if contentment were pos
sible to poets and men, with the glory of a farreaching and apparently lasting renown, he still
pursues his art, and seems, unlike Campbell and
many another poet, to have no fear of the shadow
of his own success. His lot has been truly enviable.
We have observed the disadvantages of amateurship
in the case of Landor, and noted the limitations
A FINAL SUMMARY.
imposed upon Thomas Hood by the poverty which
clung to him through life ; but Tennyson has made
the former condition a vantage-ground, and thereby
carried his work to a perfection almost unattainable
in the experience of a professional, hard-working lit
terateur. Writing as much and as little as he chose,
he has escaped the drudgery which breeds contempt.
His song has been the sweeter for his retirement,
like that of a cicada piping from a distant grove.
199
Cp. " Poets
ofAmer
ica " : /p.
222, 223.
V.
Reviewing our analysis of his genius and works, Summary
ofthefore
we find in Alfred Tennyson the true poetic irritability, going
analy.
a sensitiveness increased by his secluded life, and dis
played from time to time in "the least little touch
of the spleen " ; we perceive him to be the most
faultless of modern poets in technical execution, but
one whose verse is more remarkable for artistic per
fection than for dramatic action and inspired fervor.
His adroitness surpasses his invention. Give him a
theme, and no poet can handle it so exquisitely, yet
we feel that, with the Malory legends to draw upon,
he could go on writing " Idyls of the King " forever.
We find him objective in the spirit of his verse, but
subjective in the decided manner of his style ; pos
sessing a sense of proportion, based upon the high
est analytic and synthetic powers, a faculty that can
harmonize the incongruous thoughts, scenes, and gen
eral details of a composite period ; in thought resem
bling Wordsworth, in art instructed by Keats, but
rejecting the passion of Byron, or having nothing in
his nature that aspires to it ; finally, an artist so per
fect in a widely extended range, that nothing of his
200
ALFRED TENNYSON.
work can be spared, and, in this respect, approaching
Horace and outvying Pope ; not one of the great
wits nearly allied to madness, yet possibly to be ac
cepted as a wiser poet, serene above the frenzy of
the storm ; certainly to be regarded, in time to come,
as, all in all, the fullest representative of the refined,
speculative, complex Victorian age.
CHAPTER
VI.
202
203
2. The close study made by Tennyson of the Syracusan idyls, resulting in the adjustment of their struc
ture to English theme and composition, and in the
artistic imitation of their choicest passages.
3. Hence, his own discovery of his proper function
as a poet, and the gradual evolution and shaping of
his whole literary career.
II.
The design of this supplemental chapter is to ex
hibit some of the evidences on which the foregoing Illustration
oftheforepoints are taken. They may interest the student of "goingpoints.
comparative minstrelsy, as an addition to "his list of
" Historic Counterparts " in literature, and are worth
the attention of that host of readers, so wonted to
the faultless art of Tennyson that each trick and
turn of his verse, his every image and thought, are
more familiar to them than were the sentimental
ditties of Moore and the romantic cantos of Scott
and Byron to the poetic taste of an earlier genera
tion. And how few, indeed, of his pieces could we
spare ! so few, that when he does trifle with his' art
the critics laugh like school-boys delighted to catch
the master tripping for once ; not wholly sure but
that the matter may be noble, because, forsooth, he
composed it. Yet men, wont to fare sumptuously,
will now and then leave their delicate viands untasted, and hanker with lusty appetite for ruder and
more sinewy fare. We turn again to Byron for sweep
and fervor, to Coleridge and Shelley for the music
that is divine ; and it is through Wordsworth that
we commune with the very spirits of the woodland
and the misty mountain winds.
204
205
2o6
207
208
209
2IO
The remit
an idyllic
method.
Two kinds
ofresem
blance.
21 1
212
' cenone:
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtaxed ; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry "
But it is in the " GEnone " that we discover Tenny
son's earliest adaptation of that refrain which was a
striking beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse.
is the analogue
" O mother
of (Theocr.,
Ida, hearken
II.) ere I die,"
" See thou, whence came my love, O lady Moon " ;
of the refrain to the lament of Daphnis (Theocr., I.),
" Begin, dear Muse, begin the woodland song " ;
and of the recurrent wail in the "Epitaph of Bion"
(Mosch., III.),
" Begin, Sicilian Muses, begin the song of your sorrow ! "
Throughout
ing are strictly
the and
poemnobly
the Syracusan
maintainedmanner
; and, while
and feel
we
are considering " CEnone," a few points of more exact
resemblance may be noted :
The Thalysia (Theocr., VII. 21-23).
" Whither at noonday dost thou drag thy feet ?
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall,
The crested lark is wandering no more "
The Enchantress (Theocr., II. 38-41).
"Lo, now the sea is silent, and the winds
Are hushed. Not silent is the wretchedness
Within my breast ; but I am all aflame
With love for him who made me thus forlorn,
A thing of evil, neither maid nor wife."
213
214
'THE lotos-eaters:
process ; first, by Virgil, in several of whose eclogues
the component parts were culled from his master, as
one selects from a flower-plot a white rose, a red, A culling
process.
and then a sprig of green, to suit the exigencies of
color, while the wreath grows under the hand. Pope,
among moderns, has followed the method of Virgil,
as may be observed in either of his four " Pastorals."
The process used by Pope is tame, artificial, and
avowed ; in " The Lotos-Eaters " it is subtile, mas
terly, yet of a completeness which only parallel quo
tations can display.
The Argonauts (Theocr., XIII.) come in the after
noon unto a land of cliffs and thickets and streams;
of meadows set with sedge, whence they cut for their
couches sharp flowering-rush and the low galingale.
" In the afternoon " the Lotos-Eaters " come unto a
land " where
"Through mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale."
Except the landscape, all this, in either poem, is after i
Homer, from the ninth book of the Odyssey.
" Choric Song " follows, of them to whom
The
" Evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam " ;
and in this, the feature of the poem, are certain coin
cidences to which I refer:
Europa (Mosch., II. 3, 4).
" When Sleep, that sweeter on the eyelids lies
Than honey, and doth fetter down the eyes
With gentle bond."
2l6
217
218
ISOMETRIC SONG.
are the Doppelganger, so to speak, of the ditties sung
respectively by Milo and Battus, in " The Harvesters "
(Theocr., X.). Thirteen of these songs, many of them
in " riddling triplets of old time," are scattered through
"Audley Court," "The Golden Year," "The Prin
cess," and the completed " Idyls of the King." And
where Tennyson's rustic and civic graduates content
themselves with jest and debate, it is after a semiamcebean fashion, which no student of the Syracusan
idyls can fail to recognize.
Even in " The Gardener's Daughter " there are pas
sages which respond to the verse of Theocritus. That
simply perfect idyl, " Dora," and such pieces as " The
Brook " and " Sea-Dreams," are more original, yet
the legitimate outgrowth of the antique school. The
blank-verse idyls of Tennyson, though connecting him
with Theocritus, do not establish a ratio between the
relations of the ancient and the modern poet to their
respective periods. The Laureate is a more genuine,
because more independent and English, idyllist and
lyrist in "The May Queen," "The Miller's Daugh- "TiuMa,
ter,"
"Northern
"The Farmer,
Talking Old
Oak,"
Style."
"The Theocritus
Grandmother,"
created and
his V*-""*
OTvn school, with no models except those obtainable
from the popular mimes and catches of his own re
gion ; just as Burns, availing himself of the simple Buna.
Scottish ballads, lifted the poetry of Scotland to an
eminent and winsome individuality.
IV.
The co-relations of Theocritus and Tennyson lie in Theocritut
and Ten
the fact that our poet discovered years ago that a nyson.
period had arrived for poetry of the idyllic or com-
220
MINOR RESEMBLANCES.
221
222
MINOR RESEMBLANCES.
The Talking Oak.
"But tell me, did he read the name
I carved with many vows,
When last with throbbing heart I came
To rest beneath thy boughs ?
"And I will work in prose and rhyme,
And praise thee more in both,
Than bard has honored beech or lime," etc.
The Little Heracles (Theocr. XXIV., 7-9).
" Sleep ye, my babes,
(Alcmene's
a sweet
Lullaby.)
and healthful sleep !
Sleep safe, ye brothers twain that are my life :
Sleep, happy now, and happy wake at morn."
" Sleep
" Cradle
and Song,"
rest, sleep
in The
andPrincess.
rest,
Father will come to thee soon !
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon !
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep."
Epitaph of Bion (Mosch., HI. 68, 69).
" Thee Cypris holds more dear than that last kiss
She gave Adonis, as he lay a-dying."
Tears, Idle Tears.
"Dear as remembered kisses after death."
Bion (III. 16).
"Where neither cold of frost, nor sun, doth harm us."
Morte a"Arthur.
" Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow."
223
224
MINOR RESEMBLANCES.
225
226
227
-
228
229
"Tie
Thalysia"
and its coun
terparts.
2 SO
'THE thalysia:
231
233
CHAPTER
VII.
The early
situation
and outlook.
A ccession of
Victoria :
June 20,
i837-
235
236
THE SENTIMENTALISTS.
occasional song, full of melody and strange purposelessness. Beddoes, a stronger spirit, author of " The
Bride's Tragedy " and " Death's Jest-Book," wandered
off to Germany, and no collection of his wild and
powerful verse was made until after his decease.
Taylor, whose noble intellect and fine constructive
powers were early affected by the teachings of Words
worth, entered a grand protest against the sentimentalism into which the Byronic passion now had de
generated. He would, I believe, have done even
better work, if this very influence of Wordsworth had
not deadened his genuine dramatic power. He saw
the current evils, but could not substitute a potential
excellence or found an original school. As it is,
" Philip van Artevelde " and " Edwin the Fair " have
gained a place for him in English literature more
enduring than the honors awarded to many popular
authors of his time.
The sentimental feeling of these years was nurtured
on the verse of female writers, Mrs. Hemans and
Miss Landon, whose deaths seemed to have given
their work, always in demand, a still wider reading.
It had been fashionable for a throng of humbler
imitators, including some of gentle blood, to con
tribute to the " annuals " and " souvenirs " of Alaric
Watts, but their summer-time was nearly over and the
chirping rapidly grew faint. The Hon. Mrs. Norton,
styled " the Byron of poetesses," was at the height
of her popularity. A pure religious sentiment in
spired the sacred hymns of Keble. Young Hallam
had died, leaving material for a volume of literary
remains ; if he did not live to prove himself great,
his memory was to be the cause of greatness in
others, and is now as abiding as any fame which
237
Thomas
Love11 Beddoes: 180349Sir Henry
Taylor :
1800- 86.
The senti
mentalists.
The "An
nuals."
A laric
Alexander
Watts:
1799-1864.
Caroline
Elizabeth
Sarah
Norton :
1808- 77Rev. 7ohn
Keble:
1792- 1866.
Arthur
Henry
Hallam :
181 1 -33.
238
II.
The cyclic aspect of a nation's literary history has
been so frequently observed that any reference to it
involves a truism. The analogy between the courses
through which the art of different countries advances
and declines is no less thoroughly understood. The
country whose round of being, in every department
of effort, is most sharply defined to us, was Ancient
Greece. The rise, splendor, and final decline of her
[imaginative literature constitute the fullest paradigm
HISTORICAL ANALOGY.
239
240
III.
The tone of the first of these divisions upon the
whole was suggested by Wordsworth, while the poetic
form had not yet lost the Georgian simplicity and
profuseness. Filtered through the intervening period
of which we have spoken, its eloquence had grown
tame, its simplicity somewhat barren and prosaic.
Still, both tone and form, continuing even to our day,
are as readily distinguished, by the absence of elabo
rate adornment and of curious nicety of thought, from
those of either the Tennysonian or the very latest
school, as the water of the Mississippi from that of
the Missouri for miles below their confluence. The
poets of the group before us are not inaptly thought
to constitute the Meditative School, characterized by
seriousness, reflection, earnestness, and, withal, by re
ligious faith, or by impressive conscientious bewilder
ment among the weighty problems of modern thought.
The name of Hartley Coleridge here may be recalled.
His poetry, slight in force and volume, yet relieved
by half-tokens of his father's sudden melody and pas
sion, is cast in the mould and phrase of his father's
life-long friend. This mingled quality came by de
scent and early association. The younger Coleridge
Influence of
Words
worth.
The Medi
tative
School.
Rev. Hart
ley Cole
ridge :
1796- 1849.
242
243
244
Cp. "Poets him, likewise, that in his writings and actions " there
ofAmer
ica " : pp. is for all true hearts, and especially for young noble
339. 340.
seekers, and strivers towards what is highest, a mirror
in which some shadow of themselves and of their
immeasurably complex arena will profitably present
itself. Here also is one encompassed and struggling
even as they now are." Clough must have been a
rare and lovable spirit, else he could never have so
wrapped himself within the affections of true men.
Though he did much as a poet, it is doubtful whether
his genius reached anything like a fair development.
Intimate as he was with the Tennysons, his style,
while often reflective, remained essentially his own.
His fine original nature was never quite subservient
to passing influences. His free temperament and
radical way of thought, with a manly disdain of all
factitious advancement, made him a force even among
the choice companions attached to his side ; and he
was valued as much for his character and for what he
was able to do, as for the things he actually accom
plished. There was nothing second-rate in his mould,
Clough's
and his Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, which bears the
hexameter
reader
along less easily than the billowy hexameters
poem.
of Kingsley, is charmingly faithful to its Highland
theme, and has a Doric simplicity and strength. His
shorter pieces are uneven in merit, but all suggestive
and worth a thinker's attention. If he could have
remained in the liberal American atmosphere, and
have been spared his untimely taking-off, he might
have come to greatness ; but he is now no more, and
with him departed a radical thinker and a living
protest
The poetry
againstofthe
Lord
truckling
Houghton
expedients
is of a ofmodem
the mode.
con
templative type, very pure, and often sweetly lyrical.
245
246
DOUBTING HEARTS.
247
248
IV.
So active a literary period could not fail to devel
op, among its minor poets, singers of a more fresh
and genuine order. Here and there one may be dis
covered whose voice, however cultivated, has been
less dependent upon culture, and more upon emotion
and unstudied art. One of the finest of these, un
questionably, is Horne, author of " Cosmo de' Medici,"
"Gregory the Seventh," "The Death of Marlowe,"
and "Orion." I am not sure that in natural gift he
is inferior to his most famous contemporaries. That
he here receives brief attention is due to the dispro
portion between the sum of his productions and the
length of his career, for he still is an occasional
and eccentric contributor to letters. There is some
thing Elizabethan in Horne's writings, and no less in
249
A fine er
ratic genius.
His
" Orion,"
etc.
MA CA ULA Y. A YTOUN.
reached me, amidst much that is strange and gro
tesque, I find little that is sentimental or weak.
Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome was a liter
ary surprise, but its poetry is the rhythmical outflow
of a vigorous and affluent writer, given to splendor
of diction and imagery in his flowing prose. He
spoke once in verse, and unexpectedly. His themes
were legendary, and suited to the author's heroic cast,
nor was Latinism ever more poetical than under his
thoroughly sympathetic handling. I am aware that
the Lays are criticised as being stilted and false to the
antique, but to me they have a charm, and to almost
every healthy young mind are an immediate delight.
Where in modern ballad-verse will you find more
ringing stanzas, or more impetuous movement and
action ? Occasionally we have a noble epithet or
image. Within his range little as one who met
him might have surmised it Macaulay was a poet,
and of the kind which Scott would have been first to
honor. " Horatius " and " Virginius," among the Ro
man lays, and that resonant battle-cry of "Ivry," have
become, it would seem, a lasting portion of English
verse. In the work of Professor Aytoun, similar in
kind, but more varied, and upon Scottish themes, we
also discern what wholesome and noteworthy verse
may be composed by a man who, if not a poet of
high rank, is of too honest a breed to resort to un
wonted styles, and to measures inconsonant with the
English tongue. The ballads of both himself and
Macaulay rank among the worthiest of their class.
Aytoun's " Execution of Montrose " is a fine produc
tion. In " Bothwell," his romantic poem in the metre
and manner of Scott, he took a subject above his
powers, which are at their best in the lyric before
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
named. Canon Kingsley, as a poet, had a wider
range. His " Andromeda " is an admirable composi
tion, a poem laden with the Greek sensuousness,
yet pure as crystal, and the best-sustained example
of English hexameters produced up to the date of
its composition. It is a matter of indifference whether
the measure bearing that name is akin to the antique
model, for it became, in the hands of Kingsley,
Hawtrey, Longfellow, and Howells, an effective form
of English verse. The author of "Andromeda" re
peated the error of ignoring such quantities as do
obtain in our prosody, and relying upon accent alone ;
but his fine ear and command of words kept him
musical, interfluent, swift. In "St. Maura," and the
drama called "The Saint's Tragedy," the influence
of Browning is perceptible. Kingsley's true poetic fac
ulty is best expressed in various sounding lyrics for
which he was popularly and justly esteemed. These
are new, brimful of music, and national to the core.
" The Sands o' Dee," " The Three Fishers," and " The
Last Buccaneer " are very beautiful ; not studies, but
a true expression of the strong and tender English
heart.
Here we observe a suggestive fact. With few ex
ceptions the freshest and most independent poets of
the middle division those who seem to have been
born and not made have been, by profession and
reputation, first, writers of prose ; secondly, poets.
Their verses appear to me, like their humor, "strength's
rich superfluity." Look at Macaulay, Aytoun, and
Arnold, the first a historian and critie, the others,
essayists and college professors. Kingsley and Thack
eray might have been dramatic poets in a different
time and country, but accepted the romance and
Rev. Charles
Kingsley :
1819-75.
English
hexameter
verse.
Cp. " Poets
0/A merica": pp.
90, 91, and
pp. 195199.
Kingsley's
ballads.
Fresh and
genuine poe
try by nota
ble writers
0fprose.
Cp. "Poets
ofAmer
ica " . pp.
462-464.
252
THORNBURY. THACKERA Y.
novel as affording the most dramatic methods of
the day. Thornbury is widely known by his prose
volumes, but has composed some of the most fiery
and rhythmical songs in the English tongue. His
Ballads of the Neiv World are inferior to his Songs
of the Cavaliers and Roundheads, and to his other lyrics
of war and revolution in Great Britain and France,
which are full of unstudied lyrical power. Some of
these remind us of Browning's " Cavalier Tunes " ;
but Browning may well be proud of the pupil who
wrote " The Sally from Coventry " and " The Three
Scars." He is hasty and careless, and sometimes
coarse and extravagant ; his pieces seem to be struck
off at a heat, but what can be better than " The
Jester's Sermon," " The Old Grenadier's Story," and
" La Tricoteuse " ? How unique the Jacobite Ballads I
Read "The White Rose over the Water." "The
Three Troopers," a ballad of the Protectorate, has a
clash and clang not often resonant in these piping
times :
" Into the Devil tavern
Three booted troopers strode,
From spur to feather spotted and splashed
With the mud of a winter road.
In each of their cups they dropped a crust,
And stared at the guests with a frown ;
Then
' Goddrew
sendtheir
this swords
Crum-well-down
and roared,! ' "for a toast,
I have a feeling that this author has not been
fairly appreciated as a ballad-maker. Equally perfect
of their sort are " The Mahogany-Tree," " The Ballad
of Bouillabaise," " The Age of Wisdom," and " The
End of the Play," all by the kindly hand of Thack
eray, which shall sweep the strings of melody no
SPONTANEITY.
253
254
NO VELIST-POE TS.
resembling those of Miss Procter, and mostly of a
grave and pleasing kind. George Eliot's metrical
work has special interest, coming from a woman ac
knowledged to be, in her realistic yet imaginative
prose, at the head of living female writers. She has
brought all her energies to bear, first upon the con
struction of a drama, which was only a sucres d' estime,
and recently upon a new volume containing "The
Legend of Jubal " and other poems. The result
shows plainly that Mrs. Lewes, though possessed of
great intellect and sensibility, is not, in respect to
metrical expression, a poet. Nor has she a full con
ception of the simple strength and melody of English
verse, her polysyllabic language, noticeable in the
moralizing passages of Middlemarch, being very in
effective in her poems. That wealth of thought which
atones for all her deficiencies in prose does not seem
to be at her command in poetry. The Spanish Gypsy
reads like a second-rate production of the Byronic
school. " The Legend of Jubal " and " How Lisa
loved the King " suffer by comparison with the
narrative poems, in rhymed pentameter, of Morris,
Longfellow, or Stoddard. A little poem in blankverse, entitled " O may I join the choir invisible ! "
and setting forth her conception of the "religion of
humanity," is worth all the rest of her poetry, for it
is the outburst of an exalted soul, foregoing personal
immortality and compensated by a vision of the
growth and happiness of the human race.
Bulwer was another novelist-poet, and one of the
most persistent. During middle age he renewed the
efforts made in his youth to obtain for his metrical
writings a recognition always accorded to his ingenious
and varied prose-romance ; but whatever he did in
255
256
257
Thirty-Jive
years later.
William
Bell Scott:
1811-
Sarah
Flower
A dams :
1805-48.
LOVER. ALLINGHAM.
productions, except in the tender memory and honor
of their early comrades and friends ? Poetry is a jeal
ous mistress : she demands life, worship, tact, the
devotion of our highest faculties ; and he who refuses
all of this and more never can be, first, and above
his other attributes, an eminent or in any sense a
true and consecrated poet.
VI.
We come to a brood of minstrels scattered numer
ously as birds over the meadows of England, the ryefields of Scotland, and the green Irish hills. They are
of a kind which in any active poetic era it is a pleas
ure to regard. They make no claims to eminence.
Their work, however, though it may be faulty and
uneven, has the charm of freshness, and comes from
the heart. The common people must have songs ;
and the children of a generation that had found
pleasure in the lyrics of Moore and Haynes Bayley
have not been without their simple warblers. One
of the most lovable and natural has but lately passed
away ; Lover, a versatile artist, blitheful humorist and
poet. In writing of Barry Cornwall I have referred
to the essential nature of the song, as distinguished
from that of the lyric, and in Lover's melodies the
former is to be found. The office of such men is to
give pleasure in the household, and even if they are
not long to be held of account (though no one can
safely predict how this shall be), they gain a prompt
reward in the affection of their living countrymen.
We find spontaneity, also, in the rhymes of Ailingham, whose " Mary Donnelly " and " The Fairies "
have that intuitive grace called quality, a grace
OTHER SONG-WRITERS.
which no amount of artifice can ever hope to pro
duce, and for whose absence mere talent can never
compensate us. The ballads of Miss Downing, Waller,
and MacCarthy, all have displayed traces of the same
charm ; the last-named lyrist, a man of much culture
and literary ability, has produced still more attractive
work of another kind. Bennett, within his bounds, is
a true poet, who not only has composed many lovely
songs, but has been successful in more thoughtful
efforts. A few of his poems upon infancy and child
hood are sweetly and simply turned. Dr. Mackay, in
the course of a long and prolific career, has furnished
many good songs. Some of his studied productions
have merit, but his proper gift is confined to lyrical
work. Among the remaining Scottish and English
song-makers, Eliza Cook, the Howitts, Gilfillan, and
Swain probably have had the widest recognition ; all
have been simple, and often homely, warblers, having
their use in fostering the tender piety of household
life. Miller, a mild and amiable poet, resembling the
Howitts in his love for nature, wrote correct and
quiet verse thirty years ago, and was more noticeable
for his rural and descriptive measures than for a few
conventional songs.
It will be observed that, as in earlier years, the
most characteristic and impressive songs are of Irish
and Scottish production ; and, indeed, lyrical genius
is a special gift of the warm-hearted, impulsive Celtic
race. Nations die singing, and Ireland has been a
land of song, of melodies suggested by the political
distress of a beautiful and unfortunate country, by the
poverty that has enforced emigration and brought
pathos to every family, and by the traditional loves,
hates, fears, that are a second nature to the humble
259
Mary
DowningI
1830yohn Fran
cis IValler:
AnaDenis
Florence
MacCarthy:
1817-80.
William
Cox Ben
nett: 1820Charles
Mackay :
1814ElizaCook:
1817WiUiam
Howitt :
1795- 1879.
Mary HowM: 1798Robert
Gilfillan :
1798- 1850.
Charles
Swain :
1803-74.
Thomas
Miller:
1809-74.
Irish and
Scottish
songs.
Patriotic
ballads.
IRISH MINSTRELSY.
peasant. All Irish art is faulty and irregular, but
often its faults are endearing, and in its discords
there is sweet sound. That was a significant chorus
which broke out during the prosperous times of The
Nation, thirty years ago, and there was more than
one tuneful voice among the patriotic contributors to
the Dublin newspaper press. Griffin and Banim, novel
ists and poets, flourished at a somewhat earlier date,
and did much to revive the Irish poetical spirit.
Read Banim's " Soggarth Aroon " ; in fact, examine
the mass of poetry, old and recent, collected in Hayes'
" Ballads," with all its poverty and riches, and, amid
a great amount of rubbish, we find many genuine
folk-songs, brimming with emotion and natural poetic
fire. Certain ballads of Lady Dufferin, and such a
lyric as McGee's "Irish Wife," are not speedily for
gotten. Among the most prominent of the songmakers were the group to which I have referred,
Ingram, Davis, Duffy, Keegan, McGee, Linton (the
English liberal), Mrs. Varian, Lady Wilde, and others,
not forgetting Mangan, in some respects the most origi
nal of all. These political rhymers truthfully repre
sented the popular feeling of their own day. Their
songs and ballads will be the study of some future
Macaulay, and are of the kind that both makes and
illustrates national history. Their object was not art ;
some of their rhymes are poor indeed ; but they fairly
belong to that class of which Fletcher of Saltoun
wrote : "If a man were permitted to make all the
ballads, he need not care who should make the laws
of a nation."
Here, too, we may say a word of a contemporary
tribe of English democratic poets, many of them
springing from the people, who kept up such an ala
CHARTIST VERSE.
rum during the Chartist agitation. After Thom, the
" Inverury poet," who mostly confined himself to dia
lect and genre verses, and young Nicoll, who, at the
beginning of our period strayed from Scotland down
to Leeds, and poured out stirring liberal lyrics during
the few months left to him, after these we come to
the bards of Chartism itself. This movement lasted
from 1836 to 1850, and had a distinct school of its
own. There was Cooper, known as "the Chartist
poet." Linton, afterward to become so eminent as
an artist and engraver, was equally prolific and more
poetical, a born reformer, who relieved his eager
spirit by incessant poetizing over the pseudonym of
" Spartacus," and of whom I shall have occasion to
speak again. Ebenezer Jones was another Chartist
rhymester, but also composed erotic verse ; a man of
considerable talent, who died young. These men and
their associates were greatly in earnest as agitators,
and often to the injury of their position as artists
and poets.
261
William
Thorn:
799-1850.
Robert
Nicoll:
1814-37.
Chartism.
Thomas
Cooper :
1805-
" Spartacus."
Ebenezer
Jones :
1820-60.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.
FEW of the minor poets belonging to the middle
division of our period have been of the healthy
and independent cast of Kingsley, Thackeray, Thornbury, or Aytoun. Some have servilely followed the
vocal leaders, or even imitated one another, the law
of imitation involving a lack of judgment, and caus
ing them to copy the heresies, rather than the virtues
of their favorites ; and we are compelled to observe
the devices by which they have striven, often uncon
sciously, to resist adverse influences or to hide the
poverty of their own invention.
I.
The Chartist or radical poets, of whom we have
just spoken, were the forerunners of a more artistic
group whose outpourings the wits speedily character
ized by the epithet " spasmodic." Their work con
stantly affords examples of the knack of substitution.
Mention of Aytoun reminds us that he did good ser
vice, through his racy burlesque, Firmilian, in turning
the laugh upon the pseudo-earnestness of this rhap
sodical school. Its adherents, lacking perception and
synthesis, and mistaking the materials of poetry for
263
THE RHAPSODISTS.
poetry itself, aimed at the production of quotable
passages, and crammed their verse with mixed and
conceited imagery, gushing diction, interjections, and
that mockery of passion which is but surface-deep.
Bailey was one of the most notable of this group,
and from his earliest production may be termed the
founder of the order. Festus certainly made an im
pression upon a host of readers, and is not without
inchoate elements of power. The poet exhausted
himself by this one effort, his later productions want
ing even the semblance of force which marked it and
established the new emotional school. The poets that
took the contagion were mostly very young. Alex
ander Smith years afterward seized Bailey's mantle,
and flaunted it bravely for a while, gaining by A
Life-Drama as sudden and extensive a reputation as
that of his master. This poet wrote of
Philip
James
Bailey :
1816-
A lexander
Smith :
1830-67.
264
DAVID GRAY.
265
II.
After the death of Wordsworth the influence of
Tennyson and that of Browning had more effect upon
the abundant offerings of the minor poets. In the
work of many we discover the elaboration and finesse
of an art-method superadded by the present Laureate
to the contemplative philosophy of his predecessor ;
while not a few, impressed by Browning's dramatic
studies, assume an abrupt and picturesque manner,
and hunt for grotesque and mediaeval themes. Often
the former class substitute a commonplace realism
12
influence of
Z^dBmam-
False si'mi,ltciiy-
266
267
of Life " ?
268
269
III.
The merits and weakness of the idyllic method, as Minor idyl
compared with that of a time when a high lyric or lic poets.
epic feeling has prevailed, can best be studied in the
productions of the Laureate's followers, rather than
in his own verse ; for the latter, whatever the method,
would derive from his intellectual genius a glory and
a charm. The idyl is a picturesque, rather than an The idyt
imaginative, form of art, and calls for no great amount
of invention or passion. It invariably has the method
of a busy, anxious age, seeking rest rather than ex
citement. Through restrained emotion, music, and
picturesque simplicity it pleases, but seems to betoken
absence of creative power. The minor idyllists hunt
for themes, they do not write because their themes
compel them ; they construct poems as still-life artists
paint their pictures, becoming thorough workmen, but
270
271
Thomas
Westwood:
1814-
George
Meredith :
1828-
Thomas
Ashe: 1836
272
'vers de soc'iSre:
IV.
Of those patrician rhymes which, for want of an
English equivalent, are termed vers de socikte, the gentle
Praed, who died at the commencement of the period,
was an elegant composer. In verse under this head
may also be included, for the occasion, epigrammatic
couplets, witty and satirical songs, and all that metrical
badinage which is to other poetry what the feuilleton
is to prose. During the first half of our retrospect it
was practised chiefly by scholarly and fluent wits. In
the form of satire and parody it was cleverly employed,
we have seen, by Aytoun, in his " spasmodic tragedy "
of " Firmilian " ; merrily, too, by Aytoun and Martin
in the Bon Gualtier ballads ; by Thackeray in " LoveSongs made Easy," "Lyra Hibernica," the ballads of
" Pleaceman X.," etc. ; by Hood in an interminable
string of mirth and nonsense ; and with mock-heroic
scholarship by the undaunted Irish wit, poet, and Latinist, " Father Prout," and the whole jovial cohort
that succeeded to the foregoing worthies in the pages
of the monthly magazines. But with the restrained
manners of the present time, and the finish to which
everything is subjected, we have a revival of the more
select order of society-verse. This is marked by an
indefinable aroma which elevates it to the region of
poetic art, and owing to which, as to the imperishable
essence of a subtile perfume, the lightest ballads of
Suckling and Waller are current to this day. In fine,
Qualities of true vers de sociHk is marked by humor, by spontane
good societyity, joined with extreme elegance of finish, by the
quality we call breeding, above all, by lightness of
touch. Its composer holds a place in the Parnassian
hemicycle as legitimate as that of Robin Goodfellow
273
12*
R
in Oberon's court.
The dainty lyrics of Locker
not
unfrequently display these characteristics : he is not
strikingly original, but at times reminds us of Praed
or of Thackeray, and again, in such verses as "To
my Grandmother," of an American, Dr. Holmes.
But his verse is light, sweet, graceful, gayly wise, and
sometimes pathetic. Calverley and Dobson are the
best of the new farceurs. Fly-Leaves, by the former,
contains several burlesques and serio-comic transla
tions that are excellent in their way, with most agree
able qualities of fancy and thought. Dobson's Vign
ettes in Rhyme has one or two lyrics, besides lighter
pieces equal to the best of Calverley's, which show
their author to be not only a gentleman and a scholar,
but a most graceful poet, titles that used to be
associated in the thought of courtly and debonair
wits. Such a poet, to hold the hearts he has won,
not only must maintain his quality, but strive to vary
his style ; because, while there is no work, brightly and
originally done, which secures a welcome so instant as
that accorded to his charming verse, there is none to
which the public ear becomes so quickly wonted, and
none from which the world so lightly turns upon the
arrival of a new favorite with a different note.
Frederick
LockerLampson .
1821-
Other tokens
ofa refined
and schol
arly period.
Charles
Stuart
Calverley :
831-84.
Austin Dobson: 1840-
Recent
translators,
and the new
theory of
translation.
274
THE TRANSLATORS.
good work of this kind. Modern translations differ
noticeably, in their scholastic accuracy, from those of
earlier date, among which Chapman's are the no
blest, Pope's the freest, and those by Hunt, Shelley,
and Frere scarcely inferior to the best. The theory
of translation has undergone a change ; the old idea
having been that as long as the spirit of a foreign au
thor was reproduced an exact rendering need not be
attempted. But to how few it is given to catch that
spirit, and hence what wretched versions have ap
peared from time to time ! Only natural poets worked
successfully upon the earlier plan.
The modern
school possibly go too near the extreme of conscien
tiousness, yet a few have found the art of seizing
upon both the spirit and the text. The amount pro
duced is amazing, and has given the public access, in
our own language, to the choicest treasures of almost
every foreign literature, be it old or new.
In the earlier division, Bowring was the most pro
lific, and he has also published several volumes of a
very recent date. His excursions into the fields of
continental literature have had most importance ; but
his versions, however valuable in the absence of bet
ter, rarely display any poetic fire. The elder Lytton
was a fair type of the elegant Latinists and minor
translators belonging to the earlier school. His best
performance was a recent version of Horace, in me
tres resembling, but not copied from, the original,
a translation more faithful than Martin's paraphrases,
but not approaching the latter in elegance. Martin's
Horace has the flavor and polish of Tennyson, and
plainly is modelled upon the Laureate's verse. Of all
classical authors Horace is the Briton's favorite. The
statement of Bulwer's preface is under the truth when
THE TRANSLATORS.
it says: "Paraphrases and translations are still more
numerous than editions and commentaries. There is
scarcely a man of letters who has not at one time or
other versified or imitated some of the odes ; and
scarcely a year passes without a new translation of
them all." Upon Homer, also, the poetic scholars
have expended immense energy, and various theories
as to the proper form of measure have given birth to
several noble versions, distinguished from a multi
tude of no worth. Those of Wright, Worsley, Pro
fessor Newman, Professor Blackie, and Lord Derby
may be pronounced the best ; though admirable bits
have been done by Arnold, Dr. Hawtrey, and the
Laureate. I do not, however, hesitate to say and
believe that few will deny that the ideal translation
of Homer, marked by swiftness, simplicity, and gran
deur, has yet to be made ; nor do I doubt that it
ultimately will be, having already stated that our
Saxon-Norman language is finely adapted to repro
duce the strength and sweetness of the early Ionic
Greek. Professor Conington's Virgil, in the measure
of " Marmion," was no advance, all things considered,
upon Dryden's, nor equal to that of the American,
Cranch. Some of the best modern translations have
been made by women, who, following Mrs. Browning,
mostly affect the Greek. Miss Swanwick and Mrs.
Webster, among others, nearly maintain the standard
of their inspired exemplar. M. P. Fitz-Gerald's ver
sions of Euripides, and of the pastoral and lyric Greek
poets, may be taken as specimens of the general ex
cellence now attained, and I will not omit mention
of Calverley's complete rendition of Theocritus,
undoubtedly as good as can be made by one who
fears to undertake the original metres. Among me-
275
Ichabod
Charles
Wright:
1795-1871Philip
Stanhope
Worsley :
died 1866.
Francis
William
Newman:
1805John Stuart
Blackie :
1809Edward,
Lord
Derby :
1799- 1869.
Rev.
Edward
Craven
Hawtrey :
1789- 186*.
Seepage
John Conington :
1825-69.
Anna
Swanwick.
Augusta
Webster.
Maurice
Purcell
Fitz-Gerald.
Caherley.
Seepage 273
276
THE TRANSLATORS.
diaeval and modern writers Dante and Goethe have
received the most attention; but Longfellow and Tay
lor, in their translations of the Divine Comedy and
of Faust, and Bryant in his stately version of the
Iliad and the Odyssey, bear off die palm for Amer
ica in reproduction of the Greek, Italian, and Ger
man poems. Of Rossetti's exquisite presentation of
the Early Italian Poets, and Morris's Icelandic re
searches, I shall speak elsewhere, and can only make
a passing reference to MacCarthy's extended and beau
tiful selections from Calderon, rendered into English
asonante verse. Martin has made translations from
the Danish, and, together with Aytoun, of the bal
lads of Goethe.
Of modern Oriental explorations,
altogether the best is a version of the grave and
imaginative Jtubdiydt of Omar Khayyam, by E. FitzGerald, who has made other successful translations
from the Persian, as well as from the Spanish and
the Attic Greek.
The foregoing are but a few of the host of transla
tors ; but their labors fairly represent the richness
and excellence of this kind of work in our time,
and are cited as further illustrations of the critical
spirit of an age in which it would almost seem as if
the home-field were exhausted, such researches are
made into the literature of foreign tongues. I again
use the language of those who describe the Alexan
drian period of Greek song : men " of tact and
scholarship greatly abound," and by elegant studies
endeavor to supply the force of nature. Early and
strictly non-creative periods of English literature have
been similarly characterized, notably the century
which included Pitt, Rowe, Cooke, West, and Fawkes
among its scholars and poets.
HYMNOLOGY.
In glancing at the lyrical poetry of the era, its
hymnology should not be overlooked. Religious verse
is one of the most genuine forms of song, inspired
by the loftiest emotion, and rehearsed wherever the
instinct of worship takes outward form. Written for
music, it is lyrical in the original sense, and repre
sentative, even more than the domestic folk-songs,
of our common life and aspiration. We are not sur
prised to find the work of recent British hymn-writers
displaying the chief qualities of contemporary secular
poetry, to wit, finish, tender beauty of sentiment and
expression, metrical variety, and often culture of a
high grade. What their measures lack is the lyrical
fire, vigor, and passionate devotion of the earlier
time. Within their province they reflect the method
of Tennyson, and with all their polish and subtilty
of thought write devotional verse that is somewhat
tame beside the fervid strains of Watts, at his best,
and the beautiful lyrics of the younger Wesley. In
place of strength, exaltation, religious ecstasy, we
have elaborate sweetness, refinement, emotional re
pose. Many hymn-writers of the transition period
have held over to a recent time, such as James
Montgomery, Keble, Lyte, Edmeston, Bowring, Milman, and Moir, and the stanzas of the first-named
two have become an essential portion of English
hymnody. The best results accomplished by recent
devotional poets and this also is an outgrowth of
the new culture have been the profuse and admi
rable translations of the ancient and mediaeval Latin
hymns by the English divines, Chandler, Neale, and
Caswall, the last-named being the deftest workman
of the three, although the others may be credited with
equal poetic glow. Among the most successful origi-
277
Recent hym
nology :
teristics.
Its charac-
The early
and later
composers of
sacredverse.
Watts and
C. Wesley.
Montgom
ery, Keble,
and others.
The trans
lators :
Rev. John
Chandler
{Church of
England) :
1806-76.
Rev. John
Mason
Neale (Rr'tualist): 181866.
Rev.
Edward
Caswall
{Church of
Rome) :
1814-78.
Original
composers :
273
DIALECT VERSE.
V.
Leaving the specialists, it is observable that the Female
poets.
voices of the female poets, if not the best-trained, cer
tainly are as natural and independent as any. Their
utterance is less finished, but also shows less of Tenny
son's influence, and seems to express a truly feminine
2/9
28o
NEO-ROMANTIC SCHOOL.
original. I do not greatly admire her longer poems,
which are more fantastic than imaginative ; but else
where she is a poet of a profound and serious cast,
whose lips part with the breathing of a fervid spirit
within. She has no lack of matter to express ; it is
that expression wherein others are so fluent and adroit
which fails to serve her purpose quickly ; but when,
at last, she beats her music out, it has mysterious and
soul-felt meaning. Another woman-poet is Mrs. Web
ster, already mentioned as a translator. For many
poetic qualities this lady's work is nearly equal, in
several departments of verse, to that of the best of
her sister artists ; and I am not sure but her general
level is above them all. She has a dramatic faculty
unusual with women, a versatile range, and much
penetration of thought ; is objective in her dramatic
scenes and longer idyls, which are thinner than Brown
ing's, but less rugged and obscure ; shows great
culture, and is remarkably free from the tricks and
dangerous mannerism of recent verse.
VI.
The minor poetry of the last few years is of a
strangely composite order, vacillating between the art
of Tennyson and the grotesqueness of Browning, while
the latest of all illustrates, in rhythmical quality, the
powerful effect Swinburne's manner already has had
upon the poetic ear. We can see that the long-unpop
ular Browning at length has become a potent force
as the pioneer of a half-dramatic, half-psychological
method, whose adherents seek a change from the idyl
lic repose of the Laureate and his followers. With
this intent, and with a strong leaning toward the art
WARREN. PA YNE.
remind us, by their devotion, of Herbert or Vaughan,
by their radical insight, of the plain-spoken hom
ilies of a time when England's clergymen believed
what they preached, and, by their emblematic and
symbolic imagery, of Francis Quarles. " Old Souls,"
"The Lily of the Valley," and other parables, are
well worth close reading, and possibly are the
selectest portion of this very original writer's verse.
Warren's Philodetes, an antique drama, is a good example of the excellence attained in this kind of work
by the new men. It is close, compact, Grecian, less
rich with poetry and music than " Atalanta," but even
more statuesque and severe. This poet is of the
most cultured type. His Rehearsals is a collection
of verses that generally show the influence of Swin
burne, but include a few psychological studies in a
widely different vein. He is less florid and ornate
than his favorite master ; all of his work is highly
finished, and much of it very effective. Among his
other successes must be reckoned an admirable use
of the stately Persian quatrain./' Payne is a more
open and pronounced disciple of the Neo-Romantic
school. His first book, The Masque of Shadows, is a
collection of mystical " romaunts," containing much
old-fashioned diction, in form reminding us of Morris's j
octo-syllabic measures, but pervaded by an allegorical '
spirit. In his Intaglios we have a series of sonnets
inscribed, like those of Rossetti, to their common
master, Dante. Finally, the volume entitled Songs of
Life and Death shows the influence of Swinburne, so
curious
that his mixture
works, ifand
brought
reflection
together,
of styles.
would Neverthe
present a
less, this young poet has fire, imagination, and other
inborn qualities, and should be entirely competent
283
John
tyarm:
i8"-
joknPayne:
iS*2~
284
and ending,
" Dead.
Drop
Plop,
Plop."
flop.
Were this written by a satirist, it would be deemed
the wildest caricature. Read closely, and you see
that this fantastic nonsense is the work of an artist ;
that it has a logical design, and is composed in
serious earnest. Throughout the book there is melo
dy, color, and much fancy of a delicate kind. Here
is a minstrel, with his head turned by a false method,
and in very great danger, I should say. But lyrical
absurdities are so much the fashion just now in Eng-
285
286
RECENT CRITICISM.
Want of
wholesome
criticism.
yii.
'/hefore
In the foregoing review of the course of British
going list of
poets selected minor poetry during the present reign I have no,t
to represent tried to be exhaustive, nor to include all the lesser
the mass.
poets of the era. The latter would be a difficult
task, for the time, if not creative, has been abun
dantly prolific. Of modern minstrels, as of a certain
class of heroes, it may be said, that " every year and
month sends forth a new one"; the press groans with
their issues. My effort has been to select from the
large number, whose volumes are within my reach,
Questions
origituilly
suggested.
Tone ofthe
minor philo
sophic poets.
The idyllists, ro
mancers,
and others.
288
289
290
British and
A merican
minorpoets
contrasted.
Cp. " Poets
ofAmer
ica " .. p.
456.
A COMPARATIVE SURVEY.
in that of Great Britain ; the former always has sweet
ness, and often strength, and not seldom a fresh
ness and simplicity that are the garb of fresh and
simple thoughts. America has been passing through
the two phases which precede the higher forms of
art : the landscape period, and the sentimental or emo
tional ; and she is now establishing her figure-schools
of painting and song. A dramatic element is rapidly
coming to light. The truth is that our minor poetry,
with a few exceptions, is not well known abroad ; a
matter of the less importance, since this is the coun
try, with its millions of living readers, to which the
true American bard must look for the affectionate
preservation of his name and fame. After a close
examination of the minor poets of Britain, during the
last fifteen years, I have formed, most unexpectedly,
the belief that an anthology could be culled from the
miscellaneous poetry of the United States equally
lasting and attractive with any selected from that of
Great Britain. I do not think that British poetry is
to decline with the loss of Tennyson, Arnold, Brown
ing, and the rest. There is no cause for dejection,
none for discouragement, as to the imaginative litera
ture of the motherland. The sterility in question is
not symbolical of the over-ripening of the historical
and aged British nation ; but is rather the afternoon
lethargy and fatigue of a glorious day, the product
of a critical, scholarly period succeeding a period of
unusual splendor, and soon to be followed, as I shall
hereafter show, by a new cycle of lyrical and dramatic
achievement ; England, the mother of nations, renews
her youth from her children, and hereafter will not
be unwilling to receive from us fresh, sturdy, and
vigorous returns for the gifts we have for two centu
291
The recent
aspect, and
its true
meaning.
Reflex in
fluence of
A merica
upon the
motherland.
292
Past and
future.
CHAPTER
IX.
ROBERT BROWNING.
IN a study of Browning, the most original and un
equal of living poets, three features obviously
present themselves. His dramatic gift, so rare in
these times, calls for recognition and analysis ; bis
method the eccentric quality of his expression
constantly intrudes upon the reader; lastly, the moral
of his verse warrants a closer examination than we
give to the sentiments of a more conventional poet.
My own perception of the spirit which his poetry,
despite his assumption of a purely dramatic purpose,
has breathed from the outset, is one which I shall
endeavor to convey in simple and direct terms.
Various other examples have served to illustrate
the phases of a poet's life, but Browning arouses
discussion with respect to the elements of poetry as
an art. Hitherto I have given some account of an
author's career and writings before proffering a crit
ical estimate of the latter. But this man's genius is
so peculiar, and he has been so isolated in style and
purpose, that I know not how to speak of his works
without first seeking a key to their interpretation, and
hence must reverse in some measure the order hitherto
pursued.
Robert
Browning :
born in
Camberwell,
near Lon
don, i8x&
294
ROBERT BROWNING.
295
The modern
stage.
296
ROBERT BROWNING.
as a vehicle of expression, and the result is seen in
" Sardanapalus " and "Cain." Hence the closet-drama;
and although praiseworthy efforts, as in " Virginius "
and "Ion," have been made to revive the early method,
these modern stage-plays often are unpoetical and
tame. Most of what is excellent in our dramatic
verse is to be found in plays that could not be suc
cessfully enacted.
While Browning's earlier poems are in the dramatic
form, his own personality is manifest in the speech
and movement of almost every character of each
piece. His spirit is infused, as if by metempsychosis,
within them all, and forces each to assume a strange
Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the
poet himself. Bass, treble, or recitative, whether in
pleading, invective, or banter, the voice still is
there. But while his characters have a common
manner and diction, we become so wonted to the
latter that it seems like a new dialect which we have
mastered for the sake of its literature. This feeling
is acquired after some acquaintance with his poems,
and not upon a first or casual reading of them.
The brief, separate pieces, which he terms " dra
matic lyrics," are just as properly dramas as are
many of his five-act plays. Several of the latter were
intended for stage-production. In these we feel that
the author's special genius is hampered, so that the
student of Browning deems them less rich and rare
than his strictly characteristic essays. Even in the
most conventional, this poet cannot refrain from the
long monologues, stilted action, and metaphysical discursion, which mark the closet-drama and unfit a
composition for the stage. His chief success is in
the portrayal of single characters and specific moods.
297
I would noti3
be understood to praise his originality His special
at the expense of his greatness. His mission has mission.
been that of exploring those secret regions which
generate the forces whose outward phenomena it is
for the playwrights to illustrate. He has opened a
new field for the display of emotional power, found
ing, so to speak, a sub-dramatic school of poetry,
whose office is to follow the workings of the mind,
to discover the impalpable elements of which human
motives and passions are composed. The greatest
forces are the most elusive, the unseen mightier than
the seen ; modern genius chooses to seek for the
under-currents of the soul rather than to depict acts
and situations. Browning, as the poet of psychology,
escapes to that stronghold whither, as I have said,
science and materialism are not yet prepared to follow
him. How shall the chemist read the soul ? No
former poet has so relied upon this province for the
excursions of his muse. True, he explores by night,
stumbles, halts, has vague ideas of the topography,
and often goes back upon his course. But, though
others complete the unfinished work of Columbus, it
is to him that we award the glory of discovery,
not to the engineers and colonists that succeed him,
however firmly they plant themselves and correctly
map out the now undisputed land.
II.
Browning's manner is so eccentric as to challenge Analysis of
attention and greatly affect our estimate of him as a Browning's
method.
poet. Eccentricity is not a proof of genius, and even
an artist should remember that originality consists not
only in doing things differently, but also in " doing
298
what cmpaet.
Rtukinm
^rec'uu^n.
ROBERT BROWNING.
things better." The genius of Shakespeare and Moliere enlarged and beautified their style ; it did not
distort it. Again, the grammarian's statement is true,
that Poetry is a means of Expression. A poet may
differ from other men in having profounder emotions
and clearer perceptions, but this is not for him to
assume, nor a claim which they are swift to grant.
The lines,
"O many are the poets that are sown
By Nature ! men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine ;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,"
imply that the recognized poet is one who gives voice,
in expressive language, to the common thought and
feeling which lie deeper than ordinary speech. He
is the interpreter : moreover, he is the maker, an
artist of the beautiful, the inventor of harmonious
numbers which shall be a lure and a repose.
A poet, however emotional or rich in thought, must
not fail to express his conception and make his work
attractive. Over-possession is worth less than a more
commonplace faculty ; he that has the former . is a
sorrow to himself and a vexation to his hearers,
while one whose speech is equal to his needs, and
who knows his limitations, adds something to the
treasury of song, and is able to shine in his place,
"and be content." Certain effects are suggested by
nature ; the poet discovers new combinations within
the ground which these afford. Ruskin has shown
that in the course of years, though long at fault, the
masses come to appreciate any admirable work. By
inversion, if, after a long time has passed, the world
still is repelled by a singer, and finds neither rest
nor music in him, the fault is not with the world ;
299
3oo
ROBERT BROWNING.
301
Defective
and capri
cious ex
pression.
His recent
productions.
302
ROBERT BROWNING.
in.
Fine natu
ralgifts.
Various
stirring
lyrics.
303
Evils ofhis
general
style.
The two
BrowninA
304
ROBERT BROWNING.
than those of his poorest imitators, and which would
not be tolerated for a moment in a lesser poet.
Parodies on his style, thrown off as burlesques, are more
intelligible than much of his " Dramatis Personae."
Unlike Tennyson, he does not comprehend the limits
of a theme ; nor is he careful as to the relative im
portance either of themes or details; his mind is so
alert that its minutest turn of thought must be ut
tered ; he dwells with equal precision upon the meanest
and grandest objects, and laboriously jots down every
point that occurs to him, parenthesis within paren
thesis, until we have a tangle as intricate as the
line drawn by an anemometer upon the recordingsheet. The poem is all zigzag, criss-cross, at odds
and ends, and, though we come out right at last,
strength and patience are exhausted in mastering it.
Apply the rule that nothing should be told in verse
which can be told in prose, and half his measures
would be condemned ; since their chief metrical pur
pose is, through the stress of rhythm, to fix our at
tention, by a certain unpleasant fascination, upon a
process of reasoning from which it otherwise would
break away.
For so much of Browning's crudeness as comes from
inability to express himself, or to find a proper theme,
he may readily be forgiven ; but whatever is due to
real or assumed irreverence for the divine art, among
whose votaries he stands enrolled, is a grievous wrong,
unworthy of the humble and delightful spirit of a true
craftsman. He forgets that art is the bride of the
imagination, from whose embraces true creative work
must spring. Lastly, concerning realism, while poets
are, as Mrs. Browning said, "your only truth-tellers,'1
it is not well that repulsive or petty facts should
'PARACELSUS?
always be recorded ; only the high, essential truths
demand a poet's illumination. The obscurity wherein
Browning disguises his realism is but the semblance
of imagination, a mist through which rugged details
jut out, while the central truth is feebly to be seen.
IV.
After a period of study at the London University
young Browning, in 1832, went to Italy, and acquired
a remarkable knowledge of the Italian life and lan
guage. He mingled with all classes of the people,
mastered details, and rummaged among the monas
teries of Lombardy and Venice, studying mediaeval
history, and filling his mind with the relics of a by
gone time. All this had much to do with the bent
of his subsequent work, and possibly was of more
benefit to his learning than to his ideality.
At the age of twenty-three he published his first
drama, Paracelsus; a most unique production, strictly
speaking, a metaphysical dialogue, as noticeable for
analytic power as the romances of Keats for pure
beauty. It did not find many readers, but no man
of letters could peruse it without seeing that a genu
ine poet had come to light. From that time the
author moved in the literary society of London, and
was recognized as one who had done something and
might do something more. The play is " Faust,"
with the action and passion, and much of the poetry
and music, upon which the fascination of the German
work depends, omitted; the hero resembles "Faust"
in the double aspiration to know and to enjoy, to
search out mystical knowledge, yet drink at all the
fountains of pleasure, lest, after a long struggle,
T
305
3o6
ROBERT BROWNING.
failing of knowledge, he should have lived in vain.
It must be understood that Mr. Browning's Paracel
sus was his own creation : a man of heroic longings,
observed at various intervals, from his twentieth year,
in which he leaves his native hamlet, until he dies
at the age of forty-eight, obscure, and with his
ideal seemingly unattained ; not the juggler, empiric,
and charlatan of history, whose record the poet
frankly gives us in a foot-note.
This poem has every characteristic of Browning's
genius. The verse is as strong and as weak as the
best and worst he has composed during thirty years,
and is pitched in a key now familiar to us all.
" Paracelsus," the fruit of his youth, serves as well
for a study of this poet as any later effort, and,
though inferior to " Pippa Passes " and " In a Bal
cony," is much better than his newest romance in
blank verse. I cannot agree with critics who say
that he did his poorest work first and has been mov
ing along an ascending scale ; on the contrary, his
faults and beauties have been somewhat evenly dis
tributed throughout his career. We are vexed in
" Paracelsus " by a vice that haunts him still, that
tedious garrulity which, however relieved by beautiful
passages, palls on the reader and weakens the gen
eral effect. As an offset, he displays in this poem,
with respect to every kind of poetic faculty except
the sense of proportion, gifts equal to those of any
compeer. By turns he is surpassingly fine. We have
strong dramatic diction :
"Festus, strange secrets are let out by Death,
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world :
And I am Death's familiar, as you know.
iparacelsus:
I helped a man to die, some few weeks since ;
. . . . No mean trick
He left untried ; and truly wellnigh wormed
All traces of God's finger out of him.
Then died, grown old; and just an hour before
Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes
He sate up suddenly, and with natural voice
Said, that in spite of thick air and closed doors
God told him it was June ; and he knew well,
Without such telling, harebells grew in June ;
And all that kings could ever give or take
Would not be precious as those blooms to him."
The conception is old as Shakespeare, but the
manner is large and effective. Few authors vary the
breaks and pauses of their blank verse so naturally
as Browning, and none can so well dare to extend
the proper limits of a poem. Here, as in later plays,
he shows a more realistic perception of scenery and
nature than is common with dramatic poets. We have
a bit of painting at the outset, in the passage begin
ning,
"Nay, Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay ! "
and others, equally fine and true, are scattered through
out the dialogue.
" Paracelsus " is meant to illustrate the growth and
progress of a lofty spirit, groping in the darkness of
his time. He first aspires to knowledge, and fails ;
then to pleasure and knowledge, and equally fails
to human eyes. The secret ever seems close at
hand :
"Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprilel
We get so near so very, very near!
'T is an old tale : Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling,
But when another rock would crown their work!"
3o8
ROBERT BROWNING.
Now, it is a part of Browning's life-long habit, that
he here refuses to judge by ordinary standards, and
makes the hero's attainment lie even in his failure
and death. There are few more daring assertions of
the soul's absolute freedom than the words of Festus,
impressed by the nobility of his dying friend :
" I am for noble Aureole, God !
I am upon his side, come weal or woe !
His portion shall be mine ! He has done well !
I would have sinned, had I been strong enough,
As he has sinned ! Reward him, or I waive
Reward ! If thou canst find no place for him
He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be
His slave forever ! There are two of us ! "
The drama is well worth preserving, and even now
a curious and highly suggestive study. Its lyrical
interludes seem out of place. As an author's first
drama, it promised more for his future than if it had
been a finished production, and in any other case
but that of the capricious, tongue-tied Browning, the
promise might have been abundantly fulfilled.
In "Strafford," his second drama, the interest also
centres upon the struggles and motives of one heroic
personage, this time entangled in a fatal mesh of
great events. Apparently the poet, after some ex
perience of authorship, wished to commend his work
to popular sympathy, and tried to write a play that
should be fitted for the stage ; hence a tragedy, dedi
cated to Macready, of which the chief character, the
hapless Earl of Strafford, was assumed by that
tragedian. The piece is said to have been well re
ceived, but ran for five nights only, one of the chief
actors suddenly withdrawing from the cast. The
characters are eccentrically drawn, and are more
ROBERT BROWNING.
mass of word-building. Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus "
is a hard study, but, once entered upon, how po
etical ! what lofty episodes ! what wisdom, beauty,
and scorn ! Few such treasures await him that would
read the eleven thousand verses into which the fatal
facility of the rhymed-heroic measure has led the
muse of Browning. The structure, by its very ugli
ness and bulk, like some half-buried colossus in the
desert, may survive a lapse of time. I cannot per
suade myself to solicit credit for deeper insight by
differing from the common judgment with regard to
this unattractive prodigy.
It had its uses, seemingly, in acting as a purge to
cleanse the visual humors of the poet's eyes and to
leave his general system in an auspicious condition.
His next six years were devoted to the composition
of a picturesque group of dramas, the exact order
of which escapes me, but which finally were collected
"Beiu and in Bells and Pomegranates, a popular edition, issued
at"e7,^\s"o- m serial numbers, of this maturer work. " Luria,"
*6" King Victor and King Charles," and " The Return
"Luria." 0f the Druses," are stately pieces, historical or legend
ary, cast in full stage-form. In Luria we again see
Browning's favorite characterization, from a different
point of view. This is a large-moulded, suffering hero,
akin, if disturbed in conscience, to Wallenstein,
if devoted and magnanimous, to Othello. Luria, the
Moor, is like Othello in many ways: a brave and skil
ful general, who serves Florence (instead of Venice),
and declares,
"I can and have perhaps obliged the state,
Nor paid a mere son's duty."
He is so true and simple, that Domizia says of
him,
' luria:
3"
Landor to
312
ROBERT BROWNING.
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."
" The Re
turn of the
Druses"
3'3
The Classi
cal and
Gothic meth
ods in dra
matic art.
"King Vic
tor and
King
Charles."
" Colombe's
Birthday"
3i4
ROBERT BROWNING.
young heroine has possessed her duchy for a single
year, and now, upon her birthday, as she unsuspect
ingly awaits the greetings of her courtiers, is called
upon to surrender her inheritance to Prince Berthold,
decreed to be the lawful heir. At the same time
Valence, a poor advocate of Cleves, seeks audience
in behalf of his suffering townsmen, and ends by
defending the Duchess's title to her rank. She loves
him, and is so impressed by his nobility and cour
age as to decline the hand of the Prince, and sur
render her duchy, to become the wife of Valence,
with whom she joyfully retires to the ruined castle
where her youth was spent. This play might be
performed to the great interest of an audience com
posed exclusively of intellectual persons, who could
follow the elaborate dialogue and would be charmed
with its poetry and subtile thought. Once accept the
manner of Browning, and you must be pleased with
the delineation of the characters. " Colombe " herself
is exquisite, and like one of Shakespeare's women.
Valence seems too harsh and dry to win her, and
her choice, despite his loyalty and intellect, is hardly
defensible. Still, " Colombe's Birthday " is the most
natural and winsome of the author's stage-plays.
" A Blot in the 'Scutcheon " was brought out at
Drury Lane, in 1843. It ls full of poetry and pathos,
but there is little in it to relieve the human spirit,
which cannot bear too much of earnestness and woe
added to the mystery and burden of our daily lives.
Yet the piece has such tragic strength as to stamp
the author as a great poet, though in a narrow range.
One almost forgets the singular improbabilities of the
story, the blase talk of the child-lovers (an English
Juliet of fourteen is against nature), the stiff language
3^
316
ROBERT DROWNING.
ones a little, but reflects that God's love is best, after
all. And yet, how little can she do ! How can she
possibly affect the world ? Thus she muses, and goes
out, singing, to her holiday and the sunshine. Now,
it so happens that she passes, this day, each of the
groups or persons we have named, at an important
crisis in their lives, and they hear her various carols
as she trills them forth in the innocent gladness of
her heart. Sebald and Ottima have murdered the
latter's aged husband, and are unremorseful in their
guilty love. Jules is the victim of a fraud practised
by his rival artists, who have put in his way a young
girl, a paid model, whom he believes to be a pure
and cultured maiden. He has married her, and just
discovered the imposture. Luigi is hesitating whether
to join a patriotic conspiracy. Monsignor is tempted
by Maffeo to overlook his late brother's murder, for
the sake of the estates, and utterly to ruin Pippa.
The scene between Ottima and Sebald is the most
intense and striking passage of all Browning's poetry,
and, possibly, of any dramatic verse composed during
his lifetime up to the date of this play. A passion
ate esoteric theme is treated with such vigor and
skill as to free it from any debasing taint, in the
dialogue from which I quote :
" Ottima
The past, would you give up the past
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together?
Give up that noon I owned my love for you
The garden's silence even the single bee,
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopt,
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula's chalice set a-swing
As he clung there ' Yes, I love you ! '
Sebald.
And I drew
Back ; put far back your face with both my hands
'PIPPA PASSES.'
Lest you should grow too full of me your face
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body !
Ottima. Then our crowning night
Sebald.
The July night?
Ottima. The day of it too, Sebald !
When the heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat,
Its black-blue canopy seemed let descend
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,
And smother up all life except our life.
So lay we till the storm came.
Sebald.
How it came !
Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead ;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burnt thro' the pine-tree roof, here burnt and there.
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me : then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead
Sebald.
Yes !
How did we ever rise ?
Was it that we slept ? Why did it end ?
Ottima.
I felt you,
Fresh tapering to a point the ruffled ends
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips
(My hair is fallen now knot it again!)
Sebald. I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now, and now !
This way ? Will you forgive me be once more
My great queen ?
Ottima.
Bind it thrice about my brow ;
Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent in sin. Say that!
Sebald.
I crown you
My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent "
But here Pippa passes, singing
"God's in his heaven,
All 's right with the world ! "
See "Pippa
Passes,"
Scene I.
3i8
ROBERT BROWNING.
Sebald is stricken with fear and remorse ; his para
mour becomes hideous in his eyes; he bids her dress
her shoulders, wipe off that paint, and leave him, for
he hates her! She, the woman, is at least true to
her lover, and prays God to be merciful, not to her,
but to him.
The scene changes to the post-nuptial meeting of
Jules and Phene, and then in succession to the other
passages and characters we have mentioned. All
these persons are vitally affected, have their lives
changed, merely by Pippa's weird and suggestive
songs, coming, as if by accident, upon their hearing
at the critical moment. With certain reservations this
is a strong and delicate conception, admirably worked
out. The usual fault is present : the characters,
whether students, peasants, or soldiers, all talk like
sages ; Pippa reasons like a Paracelsus in panta
lets, her intellectual songs are strangely put in the
mouth of an ignorant silk-winding girl ; Phene is
more natural, though mature, even for Italy, at four
teen. Browning's children are old as himself; he
rarely sees them objectively. Even in the songs he is
awkward, void of lyric grace ; if they have the wild
ing flavor, they have more than need be of specks
and gnarledness. In the epilogue Pippa seeks her
garret, and, as she disrobes, after artlessly running
over the events of her holiday, soliloquizes thus :
" Now, one thing I should like really to know :
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day
Approach, I mean, so as to touch them so
As to . . in some way . . move them if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way."
Finally, she sleeps, unconscious of her day's mis
319
320
ROBERT BROWNING.
remains to examine his miscellaneous after-work, in
cluding the long poems which have appeared within
the last five years, thus far the most prolific, if not
the most creative, period of his untiring life.
321
322
ROBERT BROWNING.
likeliest to be remembered. Ever)' poet has limita
tions, and in such briefer studies Browning keeps
within the narrowest bounds allotted to him. Very
few of his best pieces are in " Dramatis Persona,"
the greater part of which book is made up of his
most ragged, uncouth, and even puerile verse ; and
it is curious that it appeared at a time when his wife
was scribbling the rhetorical verse of those years
which I have designated as her period of decline.
But observe the general excellence of the fifty poems
in " Men and Women," collected nine years earlier,
when the author was forty-three years old, and at his
prime. In the chapter upon Tennyson it was stated
that almost every poet has a representative book,
showing him at full height and variety. " Men and
Women," like the Laureate's volume of 1842, is the
most finished and comprehensive of the author's
works, and the one his readers least could spare.
Here we find numbers of those thrilling, skilfully
dramatic studies, which so many have imitated with
out catching the secret of their power.
The general effect of Browning's miscellaneous
poems is like that of a picture-gallery, where cabinetpaintings, by old and modern masters, are placed at
random upon the walls. Some are rich in color ;
others, strong in light and shade. A few are elabo
rately finished, more are careless drawings, fresh, but
hurriedly sketched in. Often the subjects are repul
sive, but occasionally we have the solitary, impressive
figure of a lover or a saint.
The poet is as familiar with mediaeval thought and
story as most authors with their own time, and adapts
them to his lyrical uses. " Andrea del Sarto " be
longs to the same group with " My Last Duchess."
323
324
ROBERT BROWNING.
" Christmas
How perilous an easy rhymed-metre is to this
Evt" and
author
was discernible in "Sordello." After the same
" Easter
Day," 1850- manner he is tempted to garrulity in the semi-relig
ious poems, " Christmas Eve " and " Easter Day." It
is difficult otherwise to account for their dreary flow,
since they are no more original in theology than
poetical in language and design.
It would be strange if Browning were not indebted,
for some of his most powerful themes, to the super
stition from which mediaeval art, politics, and daily
life took their prevailing tone. In his analysis of
its quality he seems to me extremely profound. Mochurch
nasticism in Spain even now is not so different from
studied
hatry ofof the
a piece
fifteenth
like century,
the " Soliloquy
and theof repulsive
the Spanish
imister," written in the harshest verse, well consorts
period when the orders, that took their origin
" "lSfi0" Pur'tv>
Decorne degraded through lust,
in e
jealousy, and every cardinal sin. Browning
gluttony,^. k^ as Dor(f in ^ iuustrations t0 Les
draws 11s I\^queS) with porcine or wolfish faces,
oed with vice, defiled in body and
monstrous, s^alVp orders his Tomb" has been critisoul. "The B'sK\ a {aithful study of the Romish
cised
ecclesiastic,
as notA. beingX^.
D. 15-, ^
^ .g Qnej q
misapprehend
the
&
the. spirit of that period
strongest portraitures.
.
Religion
K 0
then , was
t.
ancj greed; its
compouniKpf fear, bigotry;
f
'
with
trained
somethingVater
in^e.Church, seemet
than ^fTJ
t0 *emselves
f
often a
officers,
.
'
invested
-i ailsgr
Tier vear<?
ofx goodj andj evil,
years nf
01 ritualistic service,,
made
7 gross with
' , pelf,
i/Noalnnsv
T'ousy. seK.
sensualism,: and even
1blood-guiltiness,
. 1-t.i
vbecame>wranp-elv
3S^n6eiy ntermixed.
.. . ,
,The
poet overlays
1
this
, ' groundwork
j **.with tiat love of art
MEDIAEVAL STUDIES.
325
Studies
upon themes
takenfrom
thefirst
century-
326
ROBERT BROWNING.
merit close attention. One describes the raising of
Lazarus, narrated in an " Epistle of Karshish, the
Arab Physician." The pious, learned mage sees in
the miracle
"but a case of mania subinduced
By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days."
" Cleon " is an exposition of the highest ground
reached by the Pagan philosophy, set forth in a
letter written, by a wise poet, to Protos, the King.
At the end he makes light of the preachings of Paul,
who is welcome to the few proselytes he can make
among the ignorant slaves :
"And (as I gathered from a bystander)
Their doctrines could be held by no sane man."
The reader is forced to stop and consider what
despised doctrines even now may be afloat, which in
time may constitute the whole world's creed. The
most elaborate of these pieces is "A Death in the
Desert," the last words of St. John, the Evangelist,
recorded by Pamphylax, an Antiochene martyr. The
prologue and epilogue are sufficiently pedantic, but,
like the long-drawn narrative, so characteristic, that
this curious production may be taken as a represent
ative poem. A similar bit of realism is the sketch
of a great poet, seen in every-day life by a fellowtoWJisman, entitled, " How it Strikes a Contempo
rary. "V And now, having selected a few of these
miscellaneous pieces to represent the mass, how shall
we define their, true value, and their influence upon
recent art?
.v-Browning is justified in offering such works as a
substitute for poetic treatment of English themes,
SCHOLASTIC REALISM.
since he is upon ground naturally his own. Yet as
poems they fail to move us, and to elevate gloriously
the soul, but are the outgrowth of minute realism and
speculation. To quote from one who is reviewing a
kindred sort of literature, they sin " against the spirit
of antiquity, in carrying back the modern analytic
feeling to a scene where it does not belong." It is
owing precisely to this sin that several of Browning's
longer works are literary and rhythmical prodigies,
monuments of learning and labor rather than enno
bling efforts of the imagination. His hand is bur
dened by too great accumulation of details, and
then there is the ever-present spirit of Robert Brown
ing peering from the eyes of each likeness, however
faithful, that he portrays.
He is the most intellectual of poets, Tennyson not
excepted. Take, for example, "Caliban," with its
text, "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one
as thyself." The motive is a study of anthropomor
phism, by reflection of its counterpart in a lower
animal, half man, half beast, possessed of the faculty
of speech. The "natural theology" is food for thought;
the poetry, descriptive and otherwise, realism carried
to such perfection as to seem imagination. Here we
have Browning's curious reasoning at its best. But
what can be more vulgar and strictly unpoetical than
" Mr. Sludge, the Medium," a composition of the
same period ? Our familiarity with such types as
those to which the author's method is here applied
enables us to test it with anything but satisfaction.
Applied to a finer subject, in " Bishop Blougram's
Apology," we heartily admire its virile analysis of the
motives actuating the great prelate, who after due
reflection has rejected
327
Defect of
t/teforecitedpoems.
Browning?'s
subtilty of
intellect.
" Caliban."
"Mr.
Sludge."
" Bishop
Blougram."
328
ROBERT BROWNING.
" A life of doubt diversified by faith
For one of faith diversified by doubt."
Cardinal Wiseman is worldly and insincere ; the
poet, Gigadibs, is earnest and on the right side ; yet,
somehow, we do not quite despise the churchman
nor admire the poet. This piece is at once the fore
most defence and arraignment of Philistinism, drawn
up by a thinker broad enough to comprehend both
sides. As an intellectual work, it is meat and wine ;
as a poem, as a thing of beauty, but that is quite
another point in issue.
Browning's offhand, occasional lyrics, such as " War
ing," " Time's Revenges," " Up in a Villa," " The Ital
ian in England," " By the Fireside," " The Worst of
It," etc., are suggestive, and some of them widely
familiar. His style has been caught by others. The
picturesqueness and easy rhythm of " The Flight of
the Duchess," and the touches in briefer lyrics, are
repeated by minnesingers like Owen Meredith and
Dobell. There is a grace and turn that still evades
them, for sometimes their master can be as sweet and
tuneful as Lodge, or any other of the skylarks. Wit
ness " In a Gondola," that delicious Venetian cantata,
full of music and sweet sorrow, or "One Way of Love,"
for example, but such melodies are none too fre
quent. When he paints nature, as in " Home Thoughts,
from Abroad," how fresh and fine the landscape !
" And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows,
Hark I where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms, and dew-drops at the bent spray's edge
That 's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice ovfrt
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture 1 "
HIS SUGGESTIVENESS.
Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I neverthe
less think the last three lines the finest ever written
touching the song of a bird. Contrast therewith the
poet's later method, the prose-run-mad of stanzas
such as this :
" Hobbs
Nobbshints
prints
blue,
blue,
straight
claret hecrowns
turtlehis
eats.
cup.
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ?
What porridge had John Keats ? "
And this by no means the most impertinent of kindred
verses in his books, poetry that neither gods nor
men can endure or understand, and yet interstrewn
with delicate trifles, such as " Memorabilia," which for
suggestiveness long will be preserved. Who so deft to
catch the one immortal moment, the fleeting exqui
site word? Who so wont to reach for it, and wholly
fail?
VI.
We come, at last, to a class of Browning's poems
that I have grouped for their expression of that domi
nating sentiment, to which reference was made at the
beginning of this review. Their moral is that of the
apothegm that " Attractions are proportional to desti
nies " ; of rationalistic freedom, as opposed to Calvin
ism ; of a belief that the greatest sin does not consist
in giving rein to our desires, but in stinting or too
prudently repressing them. Life must have its full
and free development. And, as love is the masterpassion, he is most earnest in illustrating this belief
from its good or evil progress, and to this end has
composed his most impressive verse.
329
33Q
ROBERT BROWNING.
A main lesson of Browning's emotional poetry is
that the unpardonable sin is "to dare something
against nature." To set bounds to love is to commit
that sin. Through his instinct for conditions which
engender the most dramatic forms of speech and ac
tion, he is, at least, as an artist, tolerant of what is
called an intrigue ; and that many complacent English
and American readers do not recognize this, speaks
volumes either for their stupidity, or for their hypoc
risy and inward sympathy in a creed which they pro
fess to abhor. Affecting to comprehend and admire
Browning, they still refuse to forgive Swinburne,
whose crude earlier poems brought the lust of the
flesh to the edge of a grossness too palpable to be
seductive, and from which his riper manhood has
departed altogether. The elder poet, from first to
last, has appeared to defend the elective affinities
against impediments of law, theology, or social rank.
It is not my province to discuss the ethics of this
matter, but simply to speak of it as a fact.
It will not do to fall back upon Browning's protest,
in the note to his " Dramatic Lyrics," that these are
"so many utterances of so many imaginary persons,"
and not his own. For when he returns persistently
to a certain theme, illustrates it in divers ways, and
heaps the coals of genius upon it till it breaks out
into flame, he ceases to be objective and reveals his
secret thought. No matter how conservative his habit,
he is to be judged, like any artist, by his work ; and
in all his poems we see a taste for the joys and sor
rows of a free, irresponsible life, like that of the
Italian lovers, of students in their vagrant youth, or
of Consuelo and her husband upon the windy heath.
Above all, he tells us :
iin a balcony:
331
332
ROBERT BROWNING.
With fine abandonment he makes the real worth
so much more than the ideal :
"We live, and they experiment on life,
These poets, painters, all who stand aloof
To overlook the farther. Let us be
The thing they look at!"
But in a large variety of minor lyrics it is hinted
that our instincts have something divine about them ;
that, regardless of other obligations, we may not dis
obey the inward monition. A man not only may for
sake father and mother and cleave to his wife ; but,
forsake his wife and cleave to the predestined one.
No sin like repression ; no sting like regret ; no
requital for the opportunity slighted and gone by.
In " The Statue and the Bust," a typical piece,
had the man and woman seen clearly " the end " of
life, though " a crime," they had not so failed of
it:
"If you choose to play is my principle!
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will !
"The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin :
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
"Was, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say.".
" A Light Woman " turns upon the right of every
soul, however despicable, to its own happiness, and
to freedom from the meddling of others. The words
of many lyrics, attesting the boundless liberty and
sovereignty of love, are plainly written, and to say
the lesson is not there is to ape those commentators
333
334
ROBERT BROWNING.
VII.
Many of the lyrics in the volume of 1864 are so
thin and faulty, and so fail to carry out the author's
intent, the one great failure in art, as sadly to
illustrate the progressive ills which attend upon a
wrong method.
The gift still remained, however, for no work dis
plays more of ill-diffused power and swift application
than Browning's longest poem, The Ring and the Book.
It has been succeeded rapidly, within five years, by
other works, the whole almost equalling, in bulk,
the entire volume of his former writings. Their special
quality is affluence : limitless wealth of language and
illustration. They abound in the material of poetry.
A poet should condense from such star-dust the orbs
which give light and outlast time. As in " Sordello,"
Browning again fails to do this ; he gives us his
first draught, the huge, outlined block, yet to be
reduced to fit proportions, the painter's sketch,
blotchy and too obscure, and of late without the
early freshness.
Nevertheless, " The Ring and the Book " is a won
derful production, the extreme of realistic art, and
considered, not without reason, by the poet's admi
rers, to be his greatest work. To review it would
require a special chapter, and I have said enough
with respect to the author's style in my citation of
his less extended poems; but as the product of sheer
intellect this surpasses them all. It is the story of a
tragedy which took place at Rome one hundred and
seventy years ago. The poet seems to have found
his thesis in an old book, part print, part manu
script, bought for eight pence at a Florence stall:
335
336
ROBERT BROWNING.
and the facility wherewith he records the speculations
of his various characters, we are struck with wonder.
" The Ring and the Book " is thus far imaginative,
and a rhythmical marvel, but is it a stronghold of
poetic art ? As a whole, we cannot admit that it is ;
and yet the thought, the vocabulary, the imagery, the
wisdom, lavished upon this story, would equip a score
of ordinary writers, and place them beyond danger of
neglect.
Balaustiori's Adventure, the poet's next volume, dis
plays a tranquil beauty uncommon in his verse, and
it seems as if he sought, after his most prolonged
effort, to refresh his mind with the sweetness and
repose of Greek art. He treads decently and rever
ently in the buskins of Euripides, and forgets to be
garrulous in his chaste semi-translation of the Alcestis.
The girl Balaustion's prelude and conclusion are very
neatly turned, reminding us of Landor ; nor does the
book, as a whole, lack the antique flavor and the
blue, laughing freshness of the Trinacrian sea.
What shall be said of Fifine at the Fair, or of that
volume, the last but one of Browning's essays, which
not long ago succeeded it? Certainly, that they ex
hibit his steadfast tendency to produce work that is
less and less poetical. There is no harder reading
than the first of these poems; no more badly chosen,
rudely handled measure than the verse selected for
it; no pretentious work, from so great a pen, has less
of the spirit of grace and comeliness. It is a pity
that the author has not somewhat accustomed himself
to write in prose, for he insists upon recording all of
his thoughts, and many of them are essentially pro
saic. Strength and subtilty are not enough in art :
beauty, either of the fair, the terrible, or the gro
337
"Prince
HokenstielSckwangau."
"Red Cot
ton NightCap Coun
try," 1873-
Decline in
poetic value.
338
ROBERT BROWNING.
longed career has not been of advantage to the
reputation of Browning : his tree was well-rooted and
reached a sturdy growth, but the yield is too profuse,
of a fruit that still grows sourer from year to year.
Nevertheless, this poet, like all men of genius, has
happy seasons in which, by some remarkable per
formance, he seems to renew his prime. Aristopha
nes' Apology continues the charm of " Balaustion's
Adventure," to which poem it is a sequel. What I
have said of the classical purity and sweetness of
the earlier production will apply to portions of " the
last adventure of Balaustion," which also includes
" a transcript from Euripides." Besides, it displays
the richness of scholarship, command of learned de
tails, skill in sophistry and analysis, power to recall,
awaken, and dramatically inform the historic past, in
all which qualifications this master still remains un
equalled by any modern writer, even by the most
gifted and affluent pupil of his own impressive school.
VIII.
A fair estimate of Browning may, I think, be de
duced from the foregoing review of his career. It
is hard to speak of one whose verse is a metrical
paradox. I have called him the most original and
the most unequal of living poets ; he continually
descends to a prosaic level, but at times is elevated
to the Laureate's highest flights. Without realizing
the proper functions of art, he nevertheless sympa
thizes with the joyous liberty of its devotees; his life
may be conventional, but he never forgets the Latin
Quarter, and often celebrates that freedom in love
and song which is the soul of BeVanger's
339
Rich, yet
barbaric
taste.
The limits
offreedom
in art :
Theirbenefi
cent reaction
upon the art
ist's work.
34
ROBERT BROWNING.
341
The "poetry
ofthefu
ture."
What con
stitutes true
greatness in
art.
LATTER-DAY
CHAPTER
SINGERS.
X.
A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS.
lishmen is more frigid, and their wants more sordid,
than of old. The time is sufficiently imaginative.
Love of excitement, the most persistent of human
motives, is strong as ever. But the sources are vari
ous which now supply to the imagination that stimu
lus for which the new generation otherwise might
resort to poetry. It is an age of journalism ; all the
acts of all the world are narrated by the daily press.
It is, we have seen, a time of criticism and scholar
ship, similar to the Alexandrian period of Greek
thought. It is the very noontide of imaginative work
in prose ; and so largely have great novelists sup
planted the poets in general regard, that annalists
designate the Victorian period as the " age of prose
romance." Finally, and notably within the last dec
ade, readers have been confronted with those won
ders of science which have a double effect, destroy
ing the old poetic diction and imagery, and elevating
the soul with beauty and sublimity beyond anything
proffered by verse of the idyllic kind. The poets
especially Tennyson, in his recognition of modern
science and the new theology have tried to meet
the exigency, but their efforts have been timid and
hardly successful. Their art, though noble and re
fined, rarely has swayed the multitude, or even led
the literary progress of the time, that which verse
was wont to do in the great poetic epochs. Year by
year these adverse conditions have been more se
verely felt. To the latest poets, I say, the situation
is so oppressive that there is reason to believe it
must be near an end, and hence we see them striv
ing to break through and out of the restrictions that
surround them.
Where is the point of exit? This is the problem
343
Their em
barrass
ments.
344
LA TTER-DA Y SINGERS.
which, singly or in groups, they are trying, perhaps
unconsciously, to solve. Some return to a purely
natural method, applying it to scenes whose fresh
ness and simplicity may win attention ; others with
draw to the region of absolute art, and by new and
studied forms of constructive beauty gratify their own
taste, and at least secure a delight in labor which,
of itself, is full compensation. Some have applied
poetic investigation to the spiritual themes which
float like shadows among the pillars and arches of
recent materialism ; finally, all are agreed in attempt
ing to infuse with more dramatic passion the overcultured method of the day.
In this last endeavor I am sure their instinct is
right. Modern art has carried restraint and breeding
below the level of repose. Poetry, to recover its
station, must shake off its luxurious sleep : the Phi
listines are upon it. It must stimulate feeling, arouse
to life, love, and action, before there can be a true
revival of its ancient power.
It would be invidious to lay any stress upon the
fact that the body of recent English verse is supplied
by those smaller lyrists, who, the poet tells us, never
weary of singing the old eternal song. Socialists
avow that Nature is unerring in the distribution of
her groups. Among a thousand men are so many
natural farmers, so many mechanics, a number of
scholars, two or three musicians, a single philan
thropist, it may be. But we search groups of a hun
dred thousand for a tolerable poet, and of a million
for a good one. The inspired are in the proportion
of diamonds to amethysts, of gold to iron. If, in the
generation younger than Tennyson and the Brown
ings, we discover three or four singers fit to aspire
REPRESENTATIVE NAMES.
and lead the way, especially at this stage of compe
tition with science and prose romance, there surely is
no need that we should wholly despair.
I have spoken elsewhere of the minor poets, and of
those specialists who excel in dialect-writing and so
ciety-verse, and have derived from their miscellaneous
productions an idea of the tone and fashion of the
period. As we seek for those who are distinguished,
not only by power and individuality, but by the impor
tance of their accomplished work, three or four, at
most, require specific attention. Another year, and
the position may be changed ; for poets are like com
ets in the suddenness of their appearance, and too
often also in brief glory, hyperbolic orbit, and abrupt
departure to be seen no more.
Of the four whose names most readily occur to the
mind, Buchanan, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne,
the first holds an isolated position ; the remaining
three, though their gifts are entirely distinctive, have
an appearance of association through sympathy in
taste or studies, so that, while to classify them as
a school might be unphilosophical, to think of one is
to recall the others. Such a group is not without
precedent. It is not for this cause that I include the
thiee under one review ; if it were so, Buchanan, from
his antagonistic position, well might be placed else
where. The fact is, that all are latter-day poets, and
need not object to meet on the footing of guests in
the house of a common friend. With the exception of
Rossetti, these later poets are alike in at least one
respect : they are distinguished from the Farringford
school by a less condensed, more affluent order of
work, are prodigal of their verse, pouring it out in
youth, and flooding the ear with rhythm. There is
iS*
345
346
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
no nursing of couplets, and so fruitful a yield may be
taken as the evidence of a rich and fertile soil.
II.
Robert BuJudged either by his verse or by his critical writings,
berTbtSctt- Robert Buchanan seems to have a highly developed
ld^"g' poetic temperament, with great earnestness, strength
of conviction, and sensitiveness to points of right and
wrong. Upon the whole, he represents, possibly more
than any other rising man, the Scottish element in
literature, an element that stubbornly retains its char
acteristics, just as Scotch blood manages to hold its
own through many changes of emigration, intermar
riage, or long descent. The most prosaic Scotsman
has something of the imagination and warmth of feel
ing that belong to a poet; the Scottish minstrel has
the latter quality, at least, to an extent beyond ordi
nary comprehension. He wears his heart upon his
sleeve ; his naivete" and self-consciousness subject him
to charges of egotism ; he has strong friends, but
makes as many enemies by tilting against other peo
ple's convictions, and by zealous advocacy of his own.
His temperIt is difficult for such a man to confine himself to
pure art, and Buchanan is no exception to the rule.
He is a Scotsman all over, and not only in push and
aggressiveness, but, let me add, in versatility, in gen
uine love and knowledge of nature, and in his reli
gious aspiration. The latter does not manifest itself
through allegiance to any traditional belief, but through
a spirit of individual inquiry, resulting in speculations
which he advances with all the fervor of Knox or
Chalmers, and thus furnishes another illustration of
the saying that every Scot has a creed of his own.
A PUPIL OF WORDSWORTH.
347
influence
worihand
tluLke
school.
348
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
3SO
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
Lay to the udders of their dams
Their soft and pulpy lips.
The hills grow closer; to the right
The path sweeps round a shadowy bay,
Upon whose slated fringes white
And crested wavelets play.
All' else is still. But list, O list!
Hidden by bowlders and by mist,
A shepherd whistles in his fist;
From height to height the far sheep bleat
In answering iteration sweet.
Sound, seeking Silence, bends above her,
Within some haunted mountain grot;
Kisses her, like a trembling lover,
So that she stirs in sleep, but wakens not!"
As a writer of Scottish idyls, Buchanan was strictly
within his limitations, and secure from rivalry. There
is no dispute concerning a specialist, but a host will
rebuke the claims of one who aims at universal suc
cess, and would fain, like the hard-handed man of
Athens, play all parts at once. The young poet, how
ever, having so well availed himself of these homescenes, certainly had warrant for attempting other
labors than those of a mere genre painter in verse.
He took from the city various subjects for his maturer
work, treating these and his North-coast pictures in
a more realistic fashion, discarding adornment, and
letting his art teach its lesson by fidelity to actual
life. A series of the lighter city-poems, suggested by
early experiences in town, and entitled "London Lyr
ics" in the edition of 1874, is not in any way remark
able. The lines " To the Luggie " are a more poetical
tribute to his comrade, Gray, than is the lyric "To
David in Heaven." For poems of a later date he
made studies from the poor of London and it required
some courage to set before his comfortable readers
'LONDON POEMS:
351
352
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
pictures of coast-life and brave sailorly forms, more
pathetic as a narrative, and told in verse at once
sturdier and more sweet, is that dramatic and beauti
ful idyl, " The Scairth o' Bartle," in which we find a
union of naturalism and realism at their best. The
lesson is just as impressive as that of " Meg Blane,"
and the verse how tender and strong! I think that
other poets, of the rhetorical sort, might have written
the one, while Buchanan alone could have so ren
dered the Scottish-sailor dialect of the other, and
have given to its changeful scenery and detail those
fine effects which warrant us in placing "The Scairth
o' Bartle" at the high-water mark of the author's
North-coast poems.
Among other realistic studies, "Edward Crowhurst "
and " Jane Lawson " will repay attention. That this
poet has humor of the Tam-o'-Shanter kind is shown
in the racy sketch of Widow Mysie, and by the Eng
lish and Scottish Eclogues. He also has done good
work after Browning's lighter manner, of which " De
Berny " (a life-like study of a French refugee in
London) and " Kitty Kemble " may be taken as ex
amples. The latter, by its flowing satire, reminds us
of Swift, but is mellowed with the kindness and char
ity which redeem from cynicism the wit of a true
poet. The ease and grace of these two poems are
very noticeable.
It is in another direction that Buchanan has made
his decided revolt against the modes and canons of
the period. The Book of Orm invites us to a spirit
ual region, where fact and materialism cannot hamper
his imaginings. To many it will seem that, in tak
ing metaphysics with him, he but exchanges one set
of hindrances for another. It is a natural outcome
353
Transcenjadungtim-
354
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
characterized. Two episodes are prominent among
the rest. "The Dream of the World without Death"
is a strong and effective poem : a vision of the time
when
"There were no kisses on familiar faces,
No weaving of white grave-clothes, no lost pondering
Over the still wax cheeks and folded fingers.
"There was no putting tokens under pillows,
There was no dreadful beauty slowly fading,
Fading like moonlight softly into darkness.
"There were no churchyard paths to walk on, thinking
How near the well-beloved ones are lying.
There were no sweet green graves to sit and muse on,
"Till grief should grow a summer meditation,
The shadow of the passing of an angel,
And sleeping should seem easy, and not cruel.
"Nothing but wondrous parting and a blankness."
HIS VERSATILITY.
355
356
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
handicapping his pieces with affected preludes, and
his volumes with metrical statements of their purpose,
barbarisms taken from a period when people did
not clearly see that Art must stand without crutches.
Occasionally a theme which he selects, such as the
description from Heine's " Reisebilder" of the vanish
ing of the old gods, is more of a poem than any
verses that can be set to it. Nor do we care for
such an excess of self-annunciation as is found in
the prelude to " Bexhill." Faults of style are less
common, yet he does not wholly escape the affecta
tions of a school with which he is in open conflict.
Still, he can be artistic to a degree not exceeded in
the most careful poetry of his time. "The Ballad of
Judas Iscariot," which he has done well to place at
the opening of his collection, is equal in finish to
anything written since "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner," and approaches that poem in weird impressiveness and power. Among his sonnets, those of
the Coruisken series, sustained by lofty feeling and
noble diction, are without doubt the best.
In conclusion, it would appear that his work of the
last five years is not an advance upon his Scottish
idyls, and that a natural and charming poet has been
retarded by conceiving an undue sense of his inspi
ration as a seer, a mystic, a prophet of the future.
Moreover, like Southey, Buchanan has somewhat too
carefully nursed his reputation. The sibyls confided
their leaves to the winds, and knew that nothing
which the gods thought worth preserving could be
effaced by the wanton storm. His merits lie in his
originality, earnestness, and admirable understanding
of nature, in freedom of style and strength of gen
eral effect. His best poetry grows upon the reader.
III.
Rossetti is one of those men whose significant
position is not so much due to the amount of work
which they produce as to its quality, and to the prin
ciples it has suggested. Such leaders often are found,
and influence contemporary thought by the personal
magnetism that attracts young and eager spirits to
gather around them. Sometimes a man of this kind,
in respect to creative labor, is greater than his pro
ductions. But if Rossetti's special attitude has been
of more account than his poetry, it is not because
he lacks the power to equalize the two. He has
chosen to give his energies to a kindred art of ex
pression, for which his genius is no less decided.
Yet his influence as a poet, judging from his writ
ings, and from even a meagre knowledge of his life
and associates, seems to be radical and more or less
enduring.
A stream broadens as it flows. Already, in the
careers of Morris and Swinburne, we see the forms
of extension through which the indestructibility of
nature is secured for a specific mode of art. The
instinct is not so far wrong which connects these
poets with Rossetti, and calls the circle by his name.
Three men could not be more independent of one
another in their essential gifts ; yet there is some
common chain between them to which the clew most
357
358
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
kind. As a figure-painter, his drawings, such as I
have seen, are far above the strictly realistic work
produced by acolytes of his order. The term real
ism constantly is used to cloak the mediocrity of
artists whose designs are stiff, barren, and grotesque,
the form without the soul. They deal with the
minor facts of art, unable to compass the major ; their
labor is scarcely useful as a stepping-stone to higher
things ; if it were not so unimaginative, it would have
more value as a protest against conventionalism and
a guide to something new. But Rossetti, a man of
genius, has lighted his canvas and his pages with a
quality that is more ennobling. He has discerned
the spirit of beauty, wandering within the confines of
a region whose landscape is visible, not to ground
lings, but to the poet's finer sight. Even his strictly
Pre-Raphaelite verse, odd and weird as it may at first
appear, is full of exaltation and lyrical power.
Such of his ballads as recall the Troubadour period
are no more realistic than the ballads of the idyllic
poets. They are studies of what the Pre-Chaucerian
minstrels saw, and partly result from use of their
materials. However rich and rare, they hold, in the
youth of the new movement, no more ' advanced posi
tion than that of Tennyson's " Oriana " and " The
Lady of Shalott" compared with his epic and philo
sophic masterpieces. This point is worth considera
tion. The Laureate's work of this kind was an effort,
in default of natural themes, to borrow something
from that old Romantic art which so long has passed
away as again to have the effect of newness.
Much of Rossetti's verse is of this sort, yet possess
ing a quality which shows that his genius, if fully ex
ercised, might lead him to far greater achievements
359
36o
361
Style and
language.
Precision
oftouch.
362
An earnest
and spirit
ual artist.
363
364
365
366
. WILLIAM MORRIS.
compositions ; but that he approaches Tennyson in
simplicil5vjJurily,-and richness of tone. His dramatic
and lyrical powers are very marked, though not fully
developed ; if he had been restricted to verse as a
means of expression, he no doubt would have added
dal
greatly
Birthto" our
andEnglish
" Nuptial
song.
Sleep,"
Sonnets
and poems
like theso" pro
Brifoundly thoughtful as"" The Sea-Limits" and "The
Woodspurge," place him among his foremost contem
poraries. He has had a magnetic influence upon
those who come within his aureole. Should he com
plete " The House of Life " upon its original pro
jection, he will leave a monument of beauty more
lasting than the tradition of his presence. His verse
is compact of tenderness, emotional ecstasy, and poeticjire. The spirit of the master whose name he
bears clothes him as with a white garment. And we
should expect his associates to be humble lovers of
the beautiful, first of all, and through its ministry to
rise to the lustrous upper heaven of spiritual art.
IV.
It is but natural, then, that we should find in
William Morris a poet who may be described, to use
the phrase of Hawthorne, as an Artist of the Beautiful.
He delights in the manifestation of objective beauty.
Byron felt himself one with Nature. Morris is ab
sorbed in the loveliness of his romantic work, and
as an artist seems to find enchantment and content.
In this serenity of mood he possesses that which
has been denied to greater poets. True, he sings of
himself,
367
368
WILLIAM MORRIS.
and graceful designer in decorative work of many
kinds. The present era, like the Venetian, and others
in which taste has sprung from the luxury of wealth,
seems to breed a class of handicraftsmen who are
adepts in various departments of creative art. Rossetti, Morris, Linton, Scott, Woolner, Hamerton, among
others, follow the arts of song or of design at will.
Doubtless the poet Morris, while making his unique
drawings for stained glass, wall-paper, or decorative
tile-work, finds a pleasure as keen as that of the
artist Morris in the construction of his metrical ro
mances. There is balm and recreation to any writer
in some tasteful pursuit which may serve as a foil to
that which is the main labor and highest purpose of
his life.
As for his poetry, it is of a sort which must be
delightful to construct: wholly removed from self,
breeding neither anguish nor disquiet, but full of soft
music and a familiar olden charm. So easeful to read,
it cannot be unrestful to compose, and to the maker
must be its own reward. He keeps within his selfallotted region ; if it be that of a lotos-eater's dream,
he is willing to be deluded, and no longing for the
real makes him "half sick of shadows." In this re
spect he is a wise, sweet, and very fortunate bard.
Some years ago, judging of Morris by The Defence
of Guenevere, and Other Poems, the only volume which
he then had printed, I wrote of him : " Never a slov
enly writer, he gives us pieces that repay close reading,
but also compel it, for they smack of the closet and
studio rather than of the world of men and women,
or that of the woods and fields. He, too, sings the
deeds of Arthur and Lancelot." Let me now say that
there is no purer or fresher landscape, more clearly
369
WILLIAM MORRIS.
37
371
Transla
tionsfrom
the Iceland
ic-, 1869.
372
WILLIAM MORRIS.
appeared in 1869 ; but in 1868, five years after the
completion of "Jason," the public had been delighted
with the early instalments of a charming production,
which, whatever he may accomplish hereafter, fairly
exhibits his powers in their most sustained and varied
form.
The plan of The Earthly Paradise was conceived
in a day that should be marked with a white stone,
since for this poet to undertake it was to complete
it. The effort was so sure to adjust itself to his genius
(which is epic rather than dramatic), that the only
question was one of time, and that is now a question
of the past. In this important work Morris reaches
the height of his success as a relator. His poems
always have been stories. Even the shortest ballads
in his^first book are upon themes from the old chron
icles. "The Earthly Paradise" has the universe of
fiction for a field, and reclothes the choicest and most
famous legends of Asia and Europe with the delicate
fabric of its verse. Greek and Oriental lore, the tales
of the Gesta Romanorum, the romance of the Nibelungen-Lied, and even the myths of the Eddas, con
tribute to this thesaurus of narrative song. All these
tales are familiar: many of a type from which John
Fiske or Miiller would prove their long descent, tra
cing them far as the " most eastern East " ; but never
before did they appear in more attractive shape, or
fall so musically from a poet's honeyed mouth. Their
fascination is beyond question. We listen to the
narrator, as Arabs before the desert fire hang upon
the lips of one who recites some legend of the good
Haroun. Here is a successor to Boccaccio and to
Chaucer. The verse, indeed, is exclusively Chauce
rian, of which three styles are used, the heroic, sestina,
373
374
WILLIAM MORRIS.
native quality not frequent in Morris's verse, for the
excellence of this poet lies rather in his clear vision
and exquisite directness of speech. Examples, other
wise neither better nor worse than the foregoing, may
be taken from any one of the sixteen hundred pages
of his great work. I can give but the briefest state
ment of its method and range.
In each of these metrical forms the verse is smooth
and transparent, the choice result of the author's
Chaucerian studies, with what addition of beauty and
suggestiveness his genius can bestow. His language
is so pure that there absolutely is no resisting medi
um to obscure the interest of a tale. We feel that
he enjoys his story as we do, yet the technical excel
lence, seen at once by a writer, scarcely is thought
of by the lay reader, to whom poetry is in the main
addressed. Morris easily grasps the feeling of each
successive literature from which his stories are de
rived. He is at will a pagan, a Christian, or a wor
shipper of Odin and Thor; and especially has caught
the spirit of those generations which, scarcely emerged
from classicism in the South, and bordered by hea
thendom on the North, peopled their unhallowed
places with beings drawn from either source. Christ
reigned, yet the old gods had not wholly faded out,
but acted, whether fair or devilish, as subjects and
allies of Satan. All this is magically conveyed in
such poems as " The Ring given to Venus " and
" The Lady of the Land." The former may be con
sulted (and any other will do almost as well) for evi
dence of the advantage possessed by Morris through
his knowledge of mediaeval costumes, armor, dances,
festivals, and all the curious paraphernalia of days
gone by. So well equipped a virtuoso, and so facile
375
376
WILLIAM MORRIS.
fore the days come when we shall say we have no
pleasure in them, before death come, which closes
all. He not only chooses to be a dreamer of dreams,
and will not " strive to set the crooked straight," but
tells us,
" Yes, ye are made immortal on the day
Ye cease the dusty grains of tim to weigh " ;
and in every poem has some passage like this:
" Fear little, then, I counsel you,
What any son of man can do ;
Because a log of wood will last
While many a life of man goes past,
And all is over in slight space."
His hoary voyagers have toiled and wandered, as they
find, in vain :
" Lo,
A long life gone, and nothing more they know,
Why they should live to have desire and foil,
And toil, that, overcome, brings yet more toil,
Than that day of their vanished youth, when first
They saw Death clear, and deemed all life accurst
By that cold, overshadowing threat, the End."
They bave nothing left but to beguile the remnant of
their hours with story and repose, until the grave shall
be reached, in which there, is neither device, nor knowl
edge, nor wisdom. The poet's constant injunction is
to seize the day, to strive not for greater or new
things, since all will soon be over, and who knoweth
what is beyond ? In his epilogue to the entire work
he faithfully epitomizes its spirit:
" Death have we hated, knowing not what it meent ;
Life have we loved, through green leaf anrl through sere,
Though still the less we knew of its intent :
The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year,
377
378
WILLIAM MORRIS.
" In the white-flowered hawthorn brake,
Love, be merry for my sake ;
Twine the blossoms in my hair,
Kiss me where I am most fair,
Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth
What thing cometh after death ? "
We have seen that the poetry of William Morris is
thoroughly sweet and wholesome, fair with the beauty
of green fields and summer skies, and pervaded by a
restful charm. Yet it is but the choicest fashion of
romantic narrative-verse. The poet's imagination is
clear, but never lofty ; he never will rouse the soul
to elevated thoughts and deeds. His low, continuous
music reminds us of those Moorish melodies whose
delicacy and pathos come from the gentle hearts of
an expiring race, and seem the murmurous echo of
strains that had an epic glory in the far-away past.
Readers who look for passion, faith, and high im
aginings, will find his measures cloying in the end.
Rossetti's work has been confined to Pre-Chaucerian
minstrelsy, and to the spiritualism of the early Italian
school. Morris advances to a revival of the narra
tive art of Chaucer. The next effort, to complete the
cyclic movement, should renew the fire and lyric out
burst of the dramatic poets. Let us estimate the
promise of what already has been essayed in that
direction ; but to do this we must listen to the
voice of the youngest and most impassioned of the
group that stand with feet planted upon the outer
circuit of the Victorian choir, and with faces looking
eagerly toward the future.
CHAPTER XI.
LATTER-DAY SINGERS.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
SOME years have passed since this poet took the
critical outposts by storm, and with a single SwMumt:
effort gained a laurel-crown, of which no public envy, b^"^^'
nor any lesser action of his own, thenceforth could s, 1837.
dispossess him. The time has been so crowded with
his successive productions his career, with all its
strength and imprudence, has been so thoroughly that
of a poet as to heighten the interest which only a
spirit of most unusual quality can excite and long
maintain.
We have just observed the somewhat limited range
of William Morris's vocabulary. It is composed mainly
of plain Saxon words, chosen with great taste and
musically put together. No barrenness, however, is
perceptible, since to enrich that writer's language
from learned or modern sources would disturb the
tone of his pure English feeling. The nature of His diction.
Swinburne's diction is precisely opposite. His faculty
of expression is so brilliant as to obscure the other
elements which are to be found in his verse, and
constantly to lead him beyond the wisdom of art.
Nevertheless, reflecting upon his genius and the
chances of his future, it is difficult for any one to
write with cold restraint who has an eye to see, an
38o
I. '
I wish, then, to speak at some length upon the one
faculty in which Swinburne excels any living English
poet ; in which I doubt if his equal has existed
among recent poets of any tongue, unless Shelley be
excepted, or, possibly, some lyrist of the modern
French school. This is his miraculous gift of rhythm,
his command over the unsuspected resources of a
language. That Shelley had a like power is, I think,
shown in passages like the choruses of " Prometheus
Unbound," but he flourished half a century ago, and
did not have (as Swinburne has) Shelley for a prede
cessor ! A new generation, refining upon the les
sons given by himself and Keats, has carried the
art of rhythm to extreme variety and finish. Were
Shelley to have a second career, his work, if no finer
in single passages, would have, all in all, a range of
musical variations such as we discover in Swinburne's.
So close is the resemblance in quality of these two
voices, however great the difference in development,
as almost to justify a belief in metempsychosis. A
master is needed to awake the spirit slumbering in
any musical instrument. Before the advent of Swin
burne we did not realize the full scope of English
verse. In his hands it is like the violin of Paganini.
The range of his fantasias, roulades, arias, new effects
of measure and sound, is incomparable with anything
hitherto known. The first emotion of one who studies
even his immature work is that of wonder at the
38l
Unprece
dented mel
ody and
freedom.
382
383
Voice and
execution
always
essential.
384
II.
There is a resemblance, both of temperament and
intellect, between Swinburne and what is known of
Landor in his youth. The latter remained for a com
paratively brief time at college, but the younger poet,
like the elder, was a natural scholar and linguist.
He profited largely by his four years at Oxford, and
the five at Eton which preceded them, for his intuitive
command of languages is so unusual, that a year of
his study must be worth a lustrum of other men's,
and he has developed this gift by frequent and ex
quisite usage. No other Englishman has been so
able to vary his effects by modes drawn, not only
from classical and Oriental literatures, but from the
haunting beauty of mediaeval song. I should suppose
him to be as familiar with French verse, from Ronsard to Hugo, as most of us are with the poetry of
our own language, and he writes either in Greek
or Latin, old and new, or in troubadour French, as
if his thoughts came to him in the diction for the
time assumed. No really admirable work, I think,
can be produced in a foreign tongue, until this kind
of lingui- naturalization has been attained.
His first volume, The Queen Mother and Rosamond,
gave him no reputation. Possibly it was unnoticed
amid the mass of new verse offered the public. We
now see that it was of much significance. It showed
the new author to be completely unaffected by the
current idyllic mode. Not a trace of Tennyson ; just
a trace, on the other hand, of Browning ; above all, a
true dramatic manner of the poet's own, like noth
ing modern, but recalling the cadences, fire, and ac
tion of England's great dramatic period. There were
385
386
'ATALANTA IN CALYDON:
mythical germ of its conception, a sublime poem,
full of absorbing beauty, but antique neither in spirit
nor in form. "Atalanta" is upon the severest Greek
model, that of ^Eschylus or Sophocles, and reads like
an inspired translation. We cannot repeat the antique
as it existed, though a poem may be better or worse.
But consider the nearness of this success, and the
very great poetry involved.
Poetry and all, this thing has for once been done
as well as possible, and no future poet can safely at
tempt to rival it. " Atalanta " is Greek in unity
and simplicity, not only in the technical unities,
utterly disregarded in " Prometheus Unbound," but
in maintenance of a single pervading thought, the im
possibility of resisting the inexorable high gods. The
hopeless fatalism of this tragedy was not the senti
ment of the joyous and reverential Greeks, but reminds
us of the Hebrews, whose God was of a stern and
dreadful type. This feeling, expressed in much of
Swinburne's early verse, is the outcome of a haughty
and untamed intellect chafing against a law which it
cannot resist. Here is an imperious mind, requiring
years of discipline and achievement to bring it into
that harmony with its conditions through which we
arrive at strength, happiness, repose.
The opening invocation of the Chief Huntsman,
with its majestic verse and imagery, alone secures the
reader's attention, and the succeeding chorus, at the
height of Swinburne's lyric reach, resolves attention
to enchantment :
" When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
387
The best
English re
production
ofthe an
tique.
388
389
III.
Swinburne's work revived the interest felt in poetry.
His power was so evident that the public looked to
see what else had come from his pen. This led to
the collection, under the title of Poems and Ballads,
of various lyrical pieces, some of which had been
contributed to the serials, while others now were
printed for the first time. Without fair consideration,
this volume was taken as a new and studied work of
the mature poet, and there was much astonishment
over its contents. Here began a notable literary dis
cussion. If unmeasured praise had been awarded to
Swinburne for the chastity and beauty of " Atalanta,"
he now was made to feel how the critical breath could
shift to the opposite extreme and balance its early
favor with reprehension of the severest kind. Here
was a series of wild and Gothic pieces, full of sensu
ous and turbid passion, lavishing a prodigious wealth
of music and imagery upon the most perilous themes,
and treating them in an openly defiant manner.
"Poems and
,866.
Excitement
'thulook.
390
39 1
392
EARLY LYRICS.
and various ballads, besides the " Laus Veneris," to
which I already have referred. In other pieces we
discover the influence which French art and litera
ture had exerted upon the author. His acquaintance
with the round17*of French minstrelsy made it natural
for him to produce a kind of work that at first would
not be relished by the British taste and ear. The
richness of the foreign qualities brought into English
verse by Swinburne has made amends for a passing
phase of Gallic sensualism. What now crosses the
Channel is of a different breed from the stilted for
malism of Boileau. With the rise of Hugo and the
new Romantic school came freedom, lyrical melody,
and dramatic fire. Elsewhere in this volume we note
the still more potential Hebraic influence. "Aholibah " is closely imitated from Hebrew prophecy, and
" A Ballad of Burdens " is imbued with a similar
spirit, reading like the middle choruses in " Atalanta."
More classical studies, " Phaedra " and " At Eleusis,"
approach the grade, of Landor's " Hellenics." The
" Hymn to Proserpine " is a beautiful and noble
poem, dramatically reviving the emotion of a pagan
who chooses to die with his gods, and musical with
cadences which this poet has made distinctly his own.
"Anactoria" and "Dolores," two pieces against which
special objection has been made, exhibit great beauty
of treatment, and a mystical though abnormal feeling,
and are quite too fine to lose. The author holds
them to be dramatic studies, written for men and not
for babes, and connects them with " The Garden of
Proserpine " and " Hesperia," in order to illustrate
the transition from passion to satiety, and thence to
wisdom and repose. The little sonnet, " A Cameo,"
suggests the rationale of this conception, and the
393
French.
Hebraic^
andclassical
influences.
394
Veryfine
foetry.
METRICAL VARIATIONS.
The public knows, however, that it was carried by
Swinburne to excess ; that in erotic verse a confec
tion of luscious and cloying epithets was presented
again and again. At times there was an extravagance
which would have been absent if this poet, who has
abundant wit and satire, had also then had a hearty
sense of humor, and which he himself must smile at
now. But go further, and observe his original hand
ling of metres, as in the " Hymn to Proserpine " :
" Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms, and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs
in the brake " ;
and in " Hesperia " :
"Out
Fullofshore
ofthetheis,
golden
sunset,remote
and sad,wild
if atwest
all, where
with thethefulness
sea without
of joy,
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region
Blowsof with
stories,
a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from
a boy."
Examine, too, the remarkable group of songs, set to
melodies so fresh and novel : among others, " Dedi
cation," " The Garden of Proserpine," " Madonna
Mia," " Rococo," and " Before Dawn." If these have
their faults, what wrinkle can any Sybarite find in
such a rose-leaf as the lyric called " A Match " :
" If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf."
395
Unwhole
some and
fantastic
extrava
gance.
396
397
398
Tribute to
the memory
of Gautier.
1871
Swinburne'1*
tongues.
399
400
PROSE WRITINGS.
modic manner injures much of Swinburne's revolu
tionary verse. Yet here are powerful single poems :
"The Watch in the Night," " Hertha," the "Hymn
of Man," and " Perinde ac Cadaver." " Hertha " rates
high among the author's pieces, having so much lyric
force and music united with condensed and clarified
thought. " The Eve of Revolution " is like the sound
of a trumpet, and charged with fiery imagination, a
fit companion-piece to Coleridge's finest ode.
In Swinburne's poems we do not perceive the love
of nature which was so passionate an element in the
spirit and writings of Shelley, that exile from the
hearts and households of his fellow-men. Were he
compelled to follow art as a means of subsistence
and to suit his work to the market, it would be more
condensed and practical, yet would, I think, lose some
thing of its essential flavor. After all, he has been
an industrious man of letters, devoted to literature
as a matter of love and religion. The exhaustive
essays upon Blake and Chapman, his various pref
aces and annotations, and his criticisms of Arnold,
Morris, and Hugo, among other professional labors,
are fresh in mind. The prose, like the poetry, is
unflagging and impetuous beyond that of other men.
No modern writer, save De Quincey, has sustained
himself so easily and with such cumulative force
through passages which strain the reader's mental
power. His organ of expression is so developed that
no exercise of it seems to produce brain-weariness,
and he does not realize that others are subject to that
kind of fatigue.
He rarely takes up the critical pen unless to pay
honor to a work he admires, or to confront some foe
with dangerous satire and wrath. His language is so
401
No marked
passionfor
nature.
Critical ana*
other prose
essays.
402
AMERICAN POETS.
done what he could, and we acknowledge the justice
shown to one, at least, of our representative men.
But to cite other examples, and a few are enough
for this digression, if Swinburne thoroughly under
stood the deep religious sentiment, the patriotism, the
tender aspiration, of the best American homes, he
would perceive that our revered Whittier had fairly
expressed these emotions ; would comprehend the na
tional affection which discerns quality even in his
faults, and originality and music in his fervent strains.
And if he could feel the mighty presence of American
woods and waters, he would see how simply and
grandly the author of " Thanatopsis," " A Forest
Hymn," and " The Night Journey of a River," had
communed with nature, and acknowledge the Doric
strength and purity of his imaginative verse. Our
figure-school is but lately founded ; landscape-art and
sentiment have had to precede it ; but, again, cannot
even a foreign critic find in poems like Lowell's " The
Courtin' " an idyllic truth that Theocritus might re
joice in, all that can be made of the New England
dialect, and pictures full of sweetness and feeling ?
Of this much I am confident, and this much will
serve. America is not all frontier, and her riper
thought and life are reflected in her literature. Our
poets may avail themselves of " the glory that was
Greece " with as much justice and originality as any
British minstrel. The artist claims all subjects, times,
and places for his own. Bryant, Emerson, Whittier,
Lowell, Longfellow, to cite no lesser or younger
names, are esteemed by a host of their countrymen
who can read between the lines ; their poems are the
music of a land to which British authors now must
look for the largest and ever-growing portion of their
403
404
IV.
To return to Chastelard, which appeared close after
" Atalanta," but in order of composition, as I have
said, is known to have preceded the classical drama.
The latter poem seemed flooded with moonlight, but
" Chastelard " is warm-blooded and modern, charged
with lurid passion and romance. As a historical
tragedy it was a direct test of the dramatic powers
of the author, and it is as a dramatic poet that he
must be chiefly regarded. In this play we see the
ripening of the genius that in youth produced "The
Queen Mother," and to me it has far more interest
than Swinburne's political lyrics. Mary Stuart and
her " four Maries " are the women of the piece \
Chastelard, her minstrel-lover, and Darnley, the lead
ing men ; Knox, who is to figure so grandly in another
and greater work, drifts as a gloomy and portentous
shadow across the scene. The poem opens with an
exquisitely light French song of the period. A fine
romantic flavor, smacking of the " dance and Pro
vencal song," pervades the interludes of the tragedy.
The interest centres in the charm wrought by Mary
upon Chastelard, although he knows the cruelty of
one who toys with him while her ambition suffers
him to be put to death. The dungeon-scene, in which
he foregoes the Queen's pardon, is very powerful.
Swinburne may almost be said to have discovered
Mary Stuart. Upon his conception of her character
' chastelard.'
he lavishes his strength ; she becomes the historic
parallel of the Gothic Venus, loving love rather than
her lover, full of passion, full of softness and beauty,
full of caprice, vengeance, and deceit. She says of
herself :
" Nay, dear, I have
No tears in me ; I never shall weep much,
I think, in all my life ; I have wept for wrath
Sometimes, and for mere pain, but for love's pity
I cannot weep at all. I would to God
You loved me less ; I give you all I can
For all this love of yours, and yet I am sure
I shall live out the sorrow of your death
And be glad afterwards."
Yet this royal Lamia, when with a lover (and she
never is without one), is so much passion's slave as
to invite risks which certainly will be the death of
her favorite, and possibly her own ruin. In depict
ing her as she moves through the historic changes of
her life Swinburne has fortunately chosen a theme
well suited to him. Mary Beaton, who in secret
adores Chastelard, serves as a foil to the Queen, and
is an equally resolute character. The execution scene
is strongly managed, with thrilling dialogue between
this Mary and Mary Carmichael ; at the end room is
made for my lord of Bothwell, next the Queen.
Though alive with poetry and passion, this play, like
" Atalanta," is restrained within artistic bounds. It
has less mannerism than we find in most of the au
thor's early style. The chief personages are drawn
strongly and distinctly, and the language of the Scot
tish citizens, burgesses, courtiers, etc., is true to the
matter and the time. The whole play is intensely
emotional, the scenes and dialogue are vigorously
conceived, and it must be owned that " Chastelard "
405
406
ibothwell:
the poet. This section of the trilogy is many times
the length of " Chastelard." " Things, now, that bear
a weighty and a serious brow " are set before the
reader. Great affairs of state hang at poise ; Rizzio,
Darnley, Murray, Gordon, Knox, Bothwell, and the
Queen are made to live or die in our presence, and
the most of them are tangled in a red and desperate
coil. Mary's character has hardened ; she has grown
more reckless, fuller of evil passion, and now is not
only a murderess by implication, but, outraged by the
slaughter of Rizzio, becomes a murderess in fact.
The sum of her iniquities is recounted by Knox in
his preachment to the citizens of Edinburgh. That
wonderful harangue seems to me the most sustained
and characteristic passage in modern verse ; but even
this Mary Stuart, who " washed her feet " in the
blood of her lovers, even she has found her tamer
in the brutal and ruthless Bothwell, who towers like
a black demon throughout the play. Nevertheless, The Queen
ofScots.
amid her cruelties and crimes, we discover, from her
very self-abandonment to the first really strong man
she has met, that her falseness has been the reac
tion of a fine nature warped and degraded by the
feeble creatures hitherto imposed upon her. Such
love as she had for the beautiful was given to her
poet and her musician, to Chastelard and Rizzio ;
but only the virile and heroic can fully satisfy her
own nature and master it for good or evil. Under
certain auspices, from her youth up, she might have
been
Among
a paragon
the various
of love,
notable
sovereignty,
passages
andinwomanhood.
this drama
Notablefassages and
are : the death of Rizzio, the scenes before and after scenes.
the murder of Darnley, the interviews between Bothwell and Mary in Hermitage Castle and elsewhere,
408
' bothwell:
409
411
A mount
and richness
ofthe work
already ac
complished
by this poet.
Genius to be
measured at
its best.
412
RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY.
and too often sinks to didacticism in the perplexed
and timorous strains of his disciples.
After passion, reflection, taste, repose ; and such
have been the qualities displayed by numbers of the
Victorian poets in the contemplation of beauty and
knowledge, and in the production of their composite
verse. At last a Neo-Romantic school, of which
Browning and Rossetti have been leaders, is engaged
in a nervous effort to reunite beauty and passion in
rhythmical art. Swinburne, beyond the rest, having
carried expression to its farthest extreme, obeys a
healthful impulse, seeking to renew the true dramatic
vigor and thus begin another cycle of creative song.
Even Tennyson, in the mellow ripeness of his fame,
perceives that the mission of the idyllist is ended, and
extends to the latest movement his adherence and prac
tical aid. Going outside his special genius and life
long wont, he now through sheer intellectual force,
and the skill made perfect by fifty years of practice
has composed, with deliberate forethought and consum
mate art, a drama that does not belie the name. With
out much imaginative splendor, it is at least objective
and adapted to the fitness of things, and thus essen
tially different from Browning's essays toward a revival
of the dramatic mould. On the other hand, it also dif
fers from the work of the Elizabethan dramatists, in
that it is the result of a forced effort, while the models
after which it is shaped were in their day an intui
tive form of expression, the natural outgrowth of a
thoroughly dramatic age. The very effort, however, is
alike honorable to England's Laureate and significant
of the present need. Wisdom, beauty, and passion
a blended trinity constitute the poetic strength of
every imaginative era, and memorably that of Shake-
413
4'4
RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY.
speare's time. So long as the true critic's faith, hope,
and charity abide (and the greatest of these is charity),
he will justify every well-timed, masterly effort to re
call the triune spirit of Britain's noblest and most
enduring song.
416
41/"
4i8
TENNYSON.
outbursts of feeling, and never more so than in the
fine heat and choler of his later years. New read
ers may not comprehend these moods, but they are
intelligible to those who have owed him so much in
the past, and do not affect our judgment of his long
career.
419
Tragedies,
"Harold?
1876.
"Becket,"
1S84.
Lyrical
Verse.
420
LA TER L YRICS.
we see undimmed the fire and beauty of his natural
gift, and wisdom increased with age. What a col
lection, short as it is, forms the volume of Ballads
issued in his seventy-first year ! It opens with the
thoroughly English story of "The First Quarrel,"
with its tragic culmination,
"And the boat went down that night, the boat went down
that night ! "
Country life is what he has observed, and he re
flects it with truth of action and dialect. " The
Northern Cobbler" and "The Village Wife" could
be written only by the idyllist whose Yorkshire bal
lads delighted us in 1866. But here are greater
things, two or three at his highest mark. The passion
and lyrical might of " Rizpah " never have been ex
ceeded by the author, nor, I think, by any other poet
of his day. " The Revenge " and " Lucknow " are
magnificent ballads. " Sir John Oldcastle " and " Co
lumbus " are not what Browning would have made
of them ; but, again, " The Voyage of Maeldune " is a
weird and vocal fantasy, unequally poetic, with the
well-known touch in every number. Five years later
another book of purely Tennysonian ballads ap
peared. Its title-piece, Tiresias, may be classed with
" Lucretius " and " Tithonus," yet scarcely equals the
one as a study, or the other for indefinable poetic
charm. "The Wreck" and "Despair" are full of
power, and there are two more of the unique dia
lect-pieces, " To-morrow " and " The Spinster's Sweet'arts." A final Arthurian idyl, " Balin and Balan,"
is below the level of the work whose bulk it en
larges. "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade," much
inferior to the Balaklavan lyric, shows that will can
421
422
THE PEERAGE.
A FIT BESTOWAL.
gained some attention from the satirists, and his ac
ceptance of rank no doubt was honestly bemoaned
by many sturdy radicals. It is difficult, nevertheless,
to find any violation of principle or taste in the re
ceipt by England's favorite and official poet of such
an honor, bestowed at the climax of his years and
fame. Republicans should bear in mind that the
republic of letters is the only one to which Alfred
Tennyson owed allegiance ; that he was the " first
citizen " of an ancient monarchy, which honored let
ters by gratefully conferring upon him its high tradi
tional award. It would be truckling for an Amer
ican, loyal to his own form of government, to receive
an aristocratic title from some foreign potentate.
Longfellow, for example, promptly declined an order
tendered him by the king of Italy. But a sense of
fitness, and even patriotism, should make it easy for
an Englishman, faithful to a constitutional monarchy,
to accept any well-earned dignity under that system.
In every country it is thought worth while for one
to be the founder of his family ; and in Great Britain
no able man could do more for descendants, to whom
he is not sure of bequeathing his talents, than by
handing down a class-privilege, even though it con
fers no additional glory upon the original winner.
Extreme British democrats, who openly or covertly
wish to change the form of government, and even
communists, are aware that Tennyson does not be
long to their ranks. He has been, as I long since
wrote, a liberal conservative : liberal in humanity and
progressive thought, strictly conservative in allegiance
to the national system. As for that, touch but the
territory, imperil the institutions, of Great Britain,
and Swinburne himself the pupil of Landor, Maz
424
BROWNING.
zini, and Hugo betrays the blood in his veins.
Tennyson, a liberal of the Maurice group, has been
cleverly styled by Whitman a " poet of feudalism " ;
he is a celebrator of the past, of sovereignty and
knighthood ; he is no lost leader, " just for a ribbon "
leaving some gallant cause forsworn or any song un
sung. In all fairness, his acceptance of rank savors
less of inconsistency than does the logic of those who
rail at the world for neglect of genius, and then up
braid them both for coming to an understanding.
As a final word about Lord Tennyson, a laureate
of thirty-seven years' service, it may be said that no
predecessor has filled his office with fewer lapses
from the quality of a poet. Southey's patriotic rub
bish was no better, and not much worse, than his
verse at large. Wordsworth, during the few years of
his incumbency, wrote little official verse. Tennyson
has freshened the greenness of the laurel ; a vivid
series of national odes and ballads is the result of
his journey as its wearer. That some of his perfunc
tory salutations and paans have been failures, not
ably the Jubilee ode of the current year, is evidence
that genius does not always obey orders. The Wel
lington ode, " The Charge of the Light Brigade," the
dedications of " In Memoriam " and the " Idyls," and
such noble ballads as those of " Grenville," " The
Revenge," " Lucknow " these are his vouchers for
the wreath, and, whether inspired by it or not, are
henceforth a secure portion of his country's song.
II.
Old lovers of Tennyson feel that he is best un
derstood by those who grew up with his poems, and
425
426
427
"Jocostria," 1883.
" Parley
ing*" tfc-i
1887.
428
429
430
DROWNING SOCIETIES.
asts. Not only more than one University quadran
gle, but every mercantile town, from London where
the poet dwells to the farthest outpost of the west
ern continent, has its central Browning Society, from
which dependants radiate like the little spiders that
spin their tiny strands near the maternal web. Em
erson was a seer ; Browning is a virile poet and
scholar; but it has been the same with the follow
ers of both a Browning student of the first order
can do much for us, while one of the third or fourth
remove, whose degree is expressed algebraically as
Bn or ^Mb, may be and often is as prosaic a claim
ant to special illumination as one is apt to meet.
The "study" of Browning takes strong hold upon
theorists, analysts, didacticians, who care little for
poetry in itself, and who, like Chinese artists, pay
more respect to the facial dimensions of his Muse
than to her essential beauty and the divine light of
her eyes. The master himself may well view with
distrust certain phases of a movement originating
with his more-favored disciples; nor is poetry that
requires annotation in its own time surer, on that
account, of supremacy in the future. Perhaps the
best that can be said of this matter is that some
thing out of the common is needed to direct atten
tion to a great original genius, and to secure for a
poet, after his long experience of neglect, some prac
tical return for the fruits of his imagination.
A contrast between the objective, or classical,
dramatic mode and that of Browning is not deroga
tory to the resources of either. In the former, the
author's thinking is done outside of the work ; the
work itself, the product of thought, stands as a ere-
431
432
433
Tennyson
and
Browning.
Their dif
fering re
lations to
the Period.
434
SWINBURNE.
Browning is their interpreter so far as poetic insight
is concerned. To this we only have to add that he
is an eminent example of the justice of our excep
tion to Taine's dogma of the invariable subjection
of an artist to his accidental conditions. He has
proved that his genius is of the kind that creates its
own environment and makes for itself a new atmos
phere, whether of heaven or of earth.
III.
Swinburne also has been a leader, particularly on
the side of form and expression, and through his
brilliant command of effects which novices are just
as sure to copy as young musicians are to adopt the
" methods " of a Chopin or a Liszt. Obvious ten
dencies of the new school reveal the influence of
Browning, modified structurally by Swinburne's lyrical
abandonment and feats of diction and rhythm.
As he reaches middle life, the volume of his pro
ductions becomes remarkable, putting to confusion
those who doubted his vitality and staying - power.
His second classical drama, Erectheus, is severely an
tique in mould, with strong text and choruses. But it
is relatively frigid, apart from common interest, and
lacks something of the fire and melody of " Atalanta."
The author's compulsive lyrical faculty, however, has
not ceased its exercise the resulting odes, songs,
and manifold brief poems having been collected chiefly
in the second series of Poems and Ballads and in
"Songs of the Springtides," "Studies in Song," "A
Century of Roundels," and " A Midsummer Holiday."
Their variety and splendor sustain the minstrel's early
promise ; any one of the collections would make a
435
436
"MARINO FALIERO."
taking-off of a picturesque, impassioned, superbly self
ish type of royalty and womanhood. The author's
consistent ideal of Mary Stuart is formed by intui
tion and critical study, and is reasonably set forth in
his prose essay. The future will accept his concep
tion as justly interpreting the secret of her career.
In the Trilogy her fate, through the agency of Mary
Beaton, is made the predestined outcome of early and
heartless misdeeds, and dramatically ends the steady
process of the work.
Marino Faliero, postdating by sixty-five years By
ron's drama of that name, following the same chron
icle and with the same personages, is a direct chal
lenge to comparison. Both are fairly representative
of their authors. Neither is a stage-play : Byron's
was tested against his own judgment, and he found
no fault with the critics who thought his genius undramatic. There is no talk of love in either play,
except the innocent passion which Swinburne creates
between Bertuccio and the Duchess. Both poets make
the Doge's part o'ertop all others, but Byron light
ens Faliero's monologues with stage business, etc.,
and pays serious attention to the action of the piece.
Swinburne uses the higher poetic strain throughout ;
his language is heroic, the verse and diction are al
ways imposing, but proportion, background, and the
question of relative values obtain too little of his at
tention. All know the slovenly and unstudied char
acter of Byron's blank-verse. Swinburne adheres to
the type, equally finished and prodigal, to which he
has wonted us. In every sense he is a better work
man. But the directness and simplicity of Byron's
drama are to be considered. The death-speech which
he puts in Faliero's mouth, theatrical as it is, will
437
438
STILLED VOICES.
439
IV.
young
ered
Death
inandour
has
oldoriginal
summoned
alike from
review.
the
withcycle
None
his of
impartial
was
poetsmore
considtouch
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Vou:"'
plored
of
mosta unworldly
conjoint
than Rossetti,
school
and thenervously
of child
art of
andastral
exalted
minstrelsy,
light,
of founder
modern
the d'Rbsuih,
i883-
440
441
Laman
Blanchard:
1804-45.
Mortimer
Collins :
1827-76.
Charles
Jeremiah
Wells:
1800-79.
A restored
master
piece.
442
M. ARNOLD. W. MORRIS.
springs of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton, that it
wants evenness of tone. But it was well worth re
viving,- and has excited enthusiasm even in this age
of research and discovery.
V.
The new poems of several authors discussed in the
body of this work introduce few notes that suggest
much comment or a reversal of early opinion. Pro
fessor Arnold has given us too little verse of late,
but his authority as a critic of modern tendencies
has steadily widened. Traversing my first notice of
him, and as in the case of Browning, I think it right
to set down a few qualifications. I feel that the re
gret and unrest which pervade some of his lyrical
verse, and which I thought opposed to the healthy
impulses of song, were in their own way as truly the
expression of Youth as the romanticism of Childe
Harold or Locksley Hall. That Arnold was the rep
resentative in his poetry, as he has been a leader
through his prose, of the questioning progress of the
day of a day whose perturbation of itself declares
a forward-looking spirit is now more plain to me.
Like Emerson in America, he was a teacher and
stimulator of many now conspicuous in fields of men
tal activity. A tribute is due, no less, to his most
ideal trait, the subtilty with which he responds to,
and almost expresses, the inexpressible the haunt
ing suggestions, the yearnings, of man and nature
the notes of starlight and shadow, the evasive mys
tery of what we are and "all that we behold."
The most objective of these poets, William Morris,
to whom I applied Hawthorne's phrase the Artist
443
444
445
446
447
Prolific
John
A ddington
Symonds:
1840-
448
SYMONDS.
ceptive faculties, endow a writer who has the respect
of lovers of the beautiful for his service as a guide
to its history and masterpieces. A wealth of lan
guage and material sustains his prose explorations in
the renaissance, his Grecian and Italian sketches, his
charming discourse of the Greek poets and of the
Italian and other literatures. He has given us com
plete and almost ideal translations of the sonnets
of Angelo and Campanella. Coming to his original
verse, we again see what taste and sympathy can do
for a receptive nature ; all, in fact, that they can do
toward the making of a poet born, not with genius,
but with a facile and persistent bent for art. The
division between friendship and love is no more ab
solute, as not of degree but of kind, than that between
the connoisseur and the most careless but impassioned
poet. Symonds recognizes this in a thoroughbred pref
ace to Many Moods, a book covering the verses of
fifteen years. He proffers attractive work, good hand
ling of the slow metres, and an Italian modification
of the antique feeling. There is some lyrical quality
in his " Spring Songs." Almost the same remarks
apply to a later volume, New and Old. Its atmos
phere, landscape, and notes of sympathy therewith
are so unEnglish that one must possess the author's
latinesque training to feel them adequately. We have
sequences of polished sonnets in the Animi Figura
and its interpreter, Vagabundi Libellus. These studies
of a "beauty-loving and impulsive, but at the same
time self-tormenting and conscientious mind " are his
most satisfactory efforts in verse ; but if their emo
tions are, as he avows, " imagined," he reasons too
curiously for a poet. " Stella " has a right to com
plain of his hero, and it is no wonder she went mad.
EDWIN ARNOLD.
His poems are suggestive to careful students only, in
spite of their exquisite word-painting and the merit
of sonnets like those on " The Thought of Death."
Admiring the finish of them all, we try in vain to re
call the one abiding piece or stanza. Here is scholar's
work of the first order, the outcome of knowledge
and a sense of beauty. Perhaps the author would
have succeeded as well as a painter, sculptor, or
architect, for in any direction taste would be his main
stay. Nothing can be happier than his rendering, with
comments, of the mediaeval Latin Students' Songs,
neatly entitled Wine, Woman and Song ; and in the
prose " Italian By-ways " his critical touch is so light
and rare that we are thankful for his companion
ship.
Those who wish to make more than a ripple on
the stream may profit by the example of Edwin
Arnold. During the latest quarter of a busy life he
has gained a respectful hearing in his own country
and something like fame in America. He is not a
creative poet, yet the success of his Asiatic legends
is due to more than an attractive dressing-up of the
commonplace. He has zest, learning, industry, and
an instinct for color and picturesqueness strength
ened through absorption of the Oriental poetry, by
turns fanciful and sublime. Above all, he shows the
advantage of new ground, or of ground newly sur
veyed, and an interest in his Subject which is con
tagious. There is a man behind his cantos, and a
man clever enough to move in the latest direction
of our unsettled taste and thought. A distinct theme
and motive, skilfully followed, are the next best things
to inventive power. The Light of Asia was not an
ordinary production. With The Indian Song of Songs
449
45o
ALFRED AUSTIN.
and Pearls of the Faith it formed a triune exposition,
on the poetic side, of the Hindoo and Arabian theolo
gies. Probably Arnold's ideals of Buddhism, even of
Islamism. insensibly spring from a western conception,
but he conveys them with sensuous warmth and much
artistic skill. In these books and the translations
from the Mahabharata, he works an old vein in a
new way. Both the accuracy and ethics of his Ori
ental pieces have been lauded and attacked with equal
vehemence. They have received great attention in
that section of the United States where discussion is
most " advanced " and speculative, and where Bud
dhism and theosophy are just now indiscriminately
a fashion, and likely to pass away as have many fash
ions that led up to them. Arnold's longer works may
soon be laid aside, but such a lyric as " After Death
in Arabia," whether original or a paraphrase, will be
treasured for its genuine beauty and serene pledges
to human faith and hope.
Alfred Austin's essays on u The Poetry of the
Period " justly attracted notice. They were epigram
matic, conceived in a logical if disciplinary spirit, and
almost the first severe criticism to which our " chief
musicians " have been subjected. Here was one who
dared to lay his hand on the sacred images. He bore
down mercilessly upon " the feminine, narrow, domes
ticated, timorous " verse of the day, calling Tennyson
feminine, Browning studious, Whitman noisy and
chaotic, Swinburne and Morris not great because the
times are bad, but only less tedious than the rest.
While an iconoclast, his effort was constructive in its
demand for the movement and passion that have an
imated more virile eras. When so lusty a critic him
self came out as a poet, it fairly might have been
ALFRED AUSTIN.
451
452
LEWIS MORRIS.
him, yet find beyond their reach. Lewis Morris with
his Epic of Hades, Gwen, Songs of Two Worlds, and
other works of many editions, seems to be a writer
whose fluent verse satisfies the popular need for rhyth
mical diet. Certain observances usually are noted in
poetry of this kind. Its author handles a pretentious
theme, and at much length, thus giving his effort
an air of importance. He falls into the manner of
popular models, and with great facility. He has a
story to tell, or some lesson to teach, in all cases
trite enough to an expert, but more impressive to the
multitude than the expert suspects. Finally, he has
zeal and measureless industry, and takes himself more
seriously than if he were a sensitive and less robust
personage. It would be wrong to say that Mr. Mor
ris's verse is no better than that of Pollok, Tupper,
and Bickersteth. But he bears to this, the most re
fined of periods, very nearly the same relation which
they bore respectively to their own. " The Epic of
Hades " is written in diluted Tennysonian verse, its
merit lying in simplicity and avoidance of affecta
tions. It is, however, only a metrical restatement of
the Greek mythology according to Lempriere, and
without that magic transmutation which alone jus
tifies a resmelting of the antique. " Gwen " is a drama
in monologue an English love-story, and, as far as
" Maud " is dramatic, an attenuated Maud, without
novelty of form or incident. In few of Morris's poems
is there the radiant spirit which floods a word, a line,
a passage, with essential meaning. In "The Ode of
Life " he girds himself for a Pindaric effort, and
strives with much grandiloquence to display the en
tire panorama of existence. His truest poetry, though
neither he nor his admirers may so regard it, is found
453
454
JAMES THOMSON.
indeed, a score of charming themes in this one
poem. Dorothy's sweet face and noble bearing re
quire, it is true, the device of an aristocratic father
hood, and there is possibly an implication of the
benefits of cross-breeding. Munby equals Millet in
honest candor, but I think he goes beyond nature in
the one blemish of his idyl ; there is an over-coarse
ness in giving even a plough-girl hands that would
disgust a navvy or pitman. As might be expected of
the poet who wrote " Doris," that lovely pastoral, he
is an artist, and has achieved a difficult feat in popu
larizing his elegiac distiches.
A second exception is that of a man to whom a
long chapter might be devoted, and whose life and
writings, I doubt not, will be subjects of recurring
interest during years to come. For it may almost
be said of the late James Thomson, author of The
City of Dreadful Night, that he was the English Poe.
Not only in his command of measures, his weird im
aginings, intellectual power and gloom, but with re
spect to his errant yet earnest temper, his isolation,
and divergence from the ways of society as now con
stituted, and very strangely also in the successive
chances of his life so poor and proud, in his final
decline through unfortunate habits and infirmities,
even to the sad coincidence of his death in a hos
pital, do the man, his genius, and career afford an
almost startling parallel to what we know of our
poet of "the grotesque and arabesque." Shelley,
Heine, Leopardi, Schopenhauer, such were the writ
ers whom Thomson valued most, and whose influence
is visible in his poetry. Yet the production already
mentioned, and many others, have traits which are
not found elsewhere in prose or verse. So much
455
456
457
458
VII.
The poetry of many recent authors is still to be
considered. They scarcely can be said to initiate a
new school, or to divide themselves into groups like
those formed by the minor poets of a slightly earlier
time. Listening to various masters, and feeling the
absence just now of any special tone or drift, more
than one new aspirant essays some note of his own.
Their very lack of assumption, and failure to claim
by bold efforts a share of the attention secured by
the novelists, imply a tacit acknowledgment that po
etry cannot maintain at the moment its former dom
inance in the English world of letters. This is an
unpromising attitude ; but if they do not exhibit the
ardent, full-throated confidence that begets leadership,
there still are not a few who devote themselves to
ideal beauty, and sing, in spite of discouragements,
because the song is in them. They bear in one re
spect a mutual likeness. Though not given to the
technical freaks of the recent art-extremists, the work
of all displays a finish unknown at the outset of the
Victorian period. The art of dexterous verse-making
is so established that the neophyte has it at com
mand. As with the technics of modern instrumental
music, it is within common reach and not a subject
for much remark.
Gosse, whom the public first knew as a poet, and
who has become prominent as a literary scholar and
critic, has not suffered general authorship to hinder
his more ideal efforts for any length of time. That
he is an attractive and competent master of English
prose the leading journals and magazines bear con
stant witness, no less than his " Studies in Northern
EDMUND GOSSE.
Literature," his edition of Gray, lectures on poetry,
and other essays, biographies, and contributions to
works that are richer for his aid. All this prose
matter has been refined and bettered by his poetic
sensibility. And as a poet, the title of the first
book for which he was sole sponsor, On Viol and
Flute, hints of his early quality. Though plainly
alive to the renaissance movement, it was full of
young blood and tuneful impulse ; its contents apper
taining to music, art, love, and the Norse legendary
so familiar to him. His New Poems, six years later
in date, are simpler, more restrained and meditative.
They are deftly finished, pure and cool, a degree too
cool for current taste. His classical sonnets from
the first he has been a good sonneteer exhibit all
these traits. He has a strong and logical sense of
form, while his color is keyed to the tranquil and
secondary, rather than the sensuous primitive tones.
A grace in which he has few equals is the fidelity
to nature of his pastorals and lyrics. There is true
and sweet landscape, the very spirit of the English
coppices, rivers, and moors, in his quiet pieces.
Successful with the French forms which he did much
to introduce, he uses them sparingly ; in fact, he
seldom or never plays the tricks of the extreme decorationists, but trusts to the force of his thoughts
and impressions. The contents of the volume, Firdausi in Exile, may be taken, I suppose, as his most
mature and varied work, for the early drama of
" King Erik," though creditably dqne and on a
theme quite native to him, does not show his bent
to be strongly dramatic. Reviewing his verse, one
finds a genuine feeling for nature, and subtile ideal
ity, in " Sunshine before Sunrise," "The Whitethroat,"
459
460
"MICHAEL FIELD:
book. Despite, however, the flaunting bush displayed
at the portal, the wine within is rich and brimming,
and of an exhilarating flavor. The series of Love
Letters in six-line stanzas, while confessedly of the
ecstatic virtuoso-type, is a beautiful and passionate
work : its beauty that of construction, language, im
agery, its passion characteristic of the artistic na
ture, and while intensely human, free from any
taint of vulgar coarseness. The poem is quite orig
inal, its manner Elizabethan, freshened by a resort
to the Italian fountain from which the clearest
streams of English song so often have flowed.
Mackay's poetic ability is of varied range. The
appended studies and lyrics, though conspicuously
uneven, all have quality. He is a natural lyrist,
with a singing faculty, a novel metrical turn, such
as few recent lyrists have at command. In some of
his pieces we come suddenly upon a prosaic, almost
grotesque, fault of expression ; but there is a fine
impulsive spirit animating all. With the very strik
ing poem of " Mary Arden " we at last have, to apply
Lowell's phrase, something new said of Shakespeare,
and it is said sweetly and imaginatively. It is a pity
that there was any clap-trap in the early heralding
of Athese
claimpoems,
to regard
for they
wasdo at
notonce
standestablished
in need of by
it.
" Michael Field," through her first volume, embrac
ing the dramas of Callirhoe and Fair Rosamond. It
seemed a reoccupation of Swinburne's early ground,
but this was only true with respect to the choice of
themes. " Callirhoe " is classical merely in subject
and time, and is treated in a modern way, the char
acters being living men and women with a language
compact of beauty and imagination. " Fair Rosa
ROBERT BRIDGES.
mond " is brief, strong ; the culminating act of a
tragic scheme that has beguiled great artists to its
handling. The dramas in this writers second book,
TTu Father's Tragedy, etc, reveal the same vigorous
touch, but are diffuse and lack contrasting lights and
shades ; there is no humor, speech and action are
always at concert-pitch. Their diction, however, is
very original. Often an epithet carries force, and is
used in an entirely fresh way. This dramatist lacks
proportion ; her manner betokens close study of the
Elizabethans, but of the minor ones rather than the
greatest. Her work is notable for its freedom, even
audacity, and contrasts in all respects with that of
Tennyson so correct of style and proportion, yet
without natural dramatic fire. Her advance in Bru
tus Ultor is not of the right kind. It seems as if
she hunted history for plots and themes. This is a
Roman tragedy, compressed and over-virile even
coarse at times, as if the effort to speak as a man
were a forced one. " Michael Field " is ambitious
and has warrant for it. Her motto should be
" strength and beauty," and not strength alone. The
Nero of Robert Bridges, an historical tragedy of the
emperor's early reign, with narrower extremes of
passion, is to my mind a more essentially virile
work. There is a nobler severity in dialogue, which
merits the name of Roman. The diction and blankverse are restrained but impressive. The characters
of Nero, Poppaea, Seneca, Agrippina, are distinctly
drawn. While in a sense conventional, " Nero "
shows the mark of a selfpoised, confident hand. A
few of the lyrics in Bridges' eclectic and privately
printed volume of 1884 strengthen my opinion that
he is a very ideal and artistic poet. The elegy "I
463
THEODORE WATTS.
ballads in behalf of suffering womanhood and Eng
land's poor. Doubtless this was too grave an exper
imental task, for in turning at last to Italy, and its
rispetti and stornelli, she seems thoroughly at home.
Her book of songs, An Italian Garden, is the most
essentially poetic of her works thus far. It breathes
the Anglo-Italian spirit which is in fact her own.
The rispetti forming her wreath of Tuscan cypress,
with their beauty and sadness, are in every way
characteristic of this poet, and in her most sugges
tive vein. Meanwhile her acquirements enable her
to take an active part in the critical and biographi
cal industries which the inevitable book-purveyor now
opens for every rising author. Of her sister poets
not yet mentioned, Mrs. Liddell and Miss Nesbit
deserve notice. The former's "Songs in Minor
Keys " are suffused with deep religious feeling, al
ways expressed in good taste. Miss Nesbit's " Lays
and Legends " suggest immature but promising indi
viduality. She is capable of strong emotion, which
is most effective in her shorter lays.
Watts, the scholarly critic of poetry and romantic
art, and a frequent contributor of verse to the liter
ary journals, has thus far made no public collection
of his poems. My knowledge of them is confined
to some very perfect sonnets a form of verse in
which he is a natural and acknowledged master
and a few lyrics of an elevated type. His ode to a
Caged Petrel shows an eloquent method and a per
ception of Nature's grander aspects. He apparently
seeks to revive the broad feeling of the Georgian
leaders ; at all events, his touch is quite independent
of any bias derived from the eminent poets with
whom his life has been closely associated. Among
465
466
467
468
William
Sharp:
18-
469
470
471
472
ECOLE INTERME'DIAIRE.
Spanish masterpieces, and to minor reproductions
from the Turkish, Russian, and other modern anthol
ogies.
IX.
Finally we observe what has been, all in all, the
most specific phase of British minstrelsy since 1875.
This is seen in the profusion of lyrical elegantiae,
the varied grave and gay ditties, idyls, metrical cameos
and intaglios, polished epistles and satires, classed
as Society Verse, the Court Verse of older times.
Perceiving signs of its revival, I could not foresee
that it would flourish as it has, and really constitute
the main thing upon which a lyrical interval would
plume itself. Its popularity is curious and significant.
The pioneer in verse of a movement already evident
in society and household art was Austin Dobson.
This favorite poet, by turns the Horace, Suckling,
Prior, of his day, allying a debonair spirit with the
learning and precision of Queen Anne's witty fabu
lists, has well advanced a career which began with
"Vignettes in Rhyme." Enjoying the quality of that
book, I felt that its poet, to hold his listeners, must
change his song from time to time. Of this he has
proved himself fully capable. His second volume,
Proverbs in Porcelain, gave us a series of little " prov
erbs " in dialogue, exquisite bits of " Louis Quinze,"
and perfectly unique in English verse. Nothing can
excel the beauty and pathos of " Good-Night, Babette," with the Angelus song low-blended in its dy
ing fall. The lines "To a Greek Girl," in the same
collection, and the paraphrase of Gautier, " Ars Victrix," superadd a grace even beyond that of Dobson's early lyrics. Who has not read the "Idyl of
473
474
AUSTIN DOBSON.
the Carp," and the racy ballad of " Beau Brocade " ?
Here, too, are his little marvels in the shape of the
rondel, rondeau, villanelle, triolet, those French
forms which he has handled with an ease almost in
imitable, yet so wantonly provoking imitation.
Perhaps Dobson more than others has shaped the
temper of our youngest poets. A first selection from
his works appeared in the United States in 1880, its
welcome justifying a second in 1885. Meanwhile the
choice editions de luxe, Old World Idyls and At the
Sign of the Lyre, represent the greater portion of his
verse. Any author might point to such a record
with pride ; there is scarcely a stanza in these vol
umes wanting in extreme refinement, and this with
out marring its freshness and originality. In his
place one should never yield as there are stray
omens that he sometimes is yielding to any popu
lar or journalistic temptation that would add a line
to these fortunate pieces, except under the impulse
of an artistic and spirited mood.
The influence of Dobson and his associates has
been a characteristic a, symptomatic expression
of the interval between the close of the true Victo
rian period and the beginning of some new and, let
us hope, inspiring poetic era. It has created, in
fact, a sort of hole intermMiaire, of which the gay
and buoyant minstrelsy is doubtless preferable to
those affected heroics that bore every one save the
egotist who gives vent to them. For real poetry,
though but a careless song, light as thistle-down and
floating far from view, will find some lodgment for
its seed even on distant shores and after long time.
The roundelays of Villon, of Du Bellay and his
Pldiade, waited centuries for a fit English welcome
ANDREW LANG.
and interpretation. Lang's Ballads and Lyrics of old
France, in 1872, captured the spirit of early French
romantic song. Nine years afterward, his Ballades
in Blue China chimed in with the temper of our new
fangled minstrel times. Such craftsmanship as the
villanelle on Theocritus, the ballade to the same
poet, and the ballades "Of Sleep" and "Of the
Book- Hunter," came from a sympathetic hand. In
the later " Ballades and Verses Vain " are new trans
lations, etc., and a few striking addenda, memorably
the resonant sonnet on the Odyssey. A " Ballade
of his Choice of a Sepulchre " is Lang's highest
mark as a lyrist, and perhaps the freest vein of his
Rhymes d la Mode is in the long poems that do not
fall under that designation, such as "The Fortunate
Islands." He has almost preempted the " Ballade,"
but his later specimens of it are scarcely up to his
own standard. " Cameos " and " Sonnets from the
Antique " are at the head of their class, and natu
rally, for no other Oxonian is at once so variously
equipped a scholar and so much of a poet. The fi
delity, diction, and style of his prose translations of
Homer and Theocritus are equally distinguished.
Thus far his most serious contribution to poetry is
Helen of Troy, a poem taking, as one would ex
pect, the minority view of its legend, and depicting
the fair cause of Troy's downfall as a victim to the
plots of the gods. It is written felicitously in eightline stanzas of a novel type, and, while not strong
in special phrases and epithets, has much tranquil
beauty. On his working-day side, readers never wait
long for something bright from this versatile, inven
tive feuilletonist, a master of persiflage, whose
learned humor and audacity, when he is most insu
lar, are perhaps the most entertaining.
475
476
X.
ConsidcraIf imitation be flattery, Dobson and Lang have
tums sug- breathed sufficient of its incense. Their " forms "
gested by
thisreview, have haunted a multitude of young singers, and
proved as taking and infectious as the airs of Sulli
van's operettas. They have crossed the seas and
multiplied in America more rapidly than the English
sparrows which preceded them, so that, as in the
case of their feathered compatriots, the question is
whether a check can be put to the breed. As I
have said, this elegant rhyming, however light and
delicate, is in fact a special feature of the latest
Victorian literature, and, with its pretty notes ting
ling on the ear, is a text for some last words in dis
cussion of what has gone before.
First, let me say that it is but shallow reasoning
to worry over the outbreak of any fancy or fashion
in art. Let a good thing a much better thing
than any form in verse be overdone, and people
will signify their weariness of it so decisively that
the quickness of its exit will be as surprising as its
temporary vogue.
Question of
What conclusions, then, are derivable from our
tiieouthok. summary 0f the British poetic movement of the last
dozen years ? We have paid tribute to the noble
chants of a few masters who still teach us that
Poetry is the child of the soul and the imagination.
But one looks to the general drift of the younger
poets, who initiate currents to the future, for an an
swer to the question, What next ? The direct in
fluences of Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley are no
longer servilely displayed ; few echo even Tennyson ;
Browning, Rossetti, and Swinburne are more widely
EXISTING CHARACTERISTICS.
favored ; but ancestral and paternal strains are as
much confused and blended in the verse of the new
est aspirants as in genealogy. Their work is more
composite than ever, judging from the poets selected
as fairly representative. Only two of its divisions
are sufficiently pronounced for even a fanciful classi
fication. One is the Stained-Glass poetry, if I may so
term it, that dates from " The Blessed Damozel " and
cognate models by Rossetti and his group ; the other,
that Debonair Verse, whose composers apply them
selves by turns to imitation of the French minstrelsy
and forms, and to the aesthetic embroidery of Ken
sington-stitch rhyme, for in each of these pleasant
devices the same practitioners excel. Now the class
first named, and the first division of the second, are
of alien origin : they are exotics their renaissance
is of the chivalry, romance, mysticism, and balladry
of foreign literatures. Only that witty, gallant verse
which takes its cue from the courtly British models
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is an ex
ception, and that, whatever its cleverness and pop
ularity, can hardly be termed inventive.
The next thing to be noted is the finical nicety to
which, as we see, the technique of poetry has ad
vanced. Never were there so many capable of pol
ishing measures quite unexceptionable as to form
and structure, never fewer whose efforts have lifted
them above what is, to be sure, an unprecedented
level but still a level. The cult of beauty and art,
delightfully revived so long ago by Hunt and Keats,
has brought us at last to this. Concerning inspira
tion and the creative impulse, we have seen first :
that recent verse-makers who are most ambitious and
prolific have not given much proof of exceptional
477
478
TRUE REALISM.
genius. Their productions have the form and dimen
sion of masterpieces, and little more. Secondly :
those who appear to be real poets, shrinking from
the eiTort to do great things in an uncongenial time,
reveal their quality by lovely minor work some
times rising to an heroic and passionate but briefly
uttered strain. And it is better to do small things
well than to essay bolder ventures without heart or
seriousness. Still, I think they must now and then
doubt the importance of thus increasing, without
specific increase of beauty and novelty, the mass of
England's rich anthology. Looking back, years from
now, it will be seen that one noble song on a com
pulsive theme has survived whole volumes of elabo
rate,
What
soulless
is it, artisanship
then, that by
chills
even
thethe
" heart
natural
andpoets.
seri
ousness " of those most artistic and ideal ? The rise
of conditions adverse to the imaginative exercise of
their powers has been acknowledged from the first
in these essays. It is clear that instinct has become
measurably dulled, as concerns the relative value of
efforts ; so that poets do not magnify their calling
as of old. There is less bounce, and, unfortunately,
still less aspiration. Nor has the modern spirit, now
freed from sentimental illusions, as yet brought its
wits to a thorough understanding of what true Real
ism is viz., that which is just as faithful to the
ideal and to the soul of things as to obvious and
external matters of artistic treatment. Here again
the law of reaction will in the end prevail. Its op
eration is already visible in the demand for more in
ventive and wholesomely romantic works of fiction ;
and this is but the forerunner of a corresponding
impulse by which the poet the maker the crea
SCHOLAR'S WORK.
tive idealist whose office it is to perceive and il
lumine all realities, both material and spiritual, will
have his place again.
For a time, however, the revival of creative prosefiction may occupy more than one poetic mind.
Novel-writing is more vigorously pursued than ever,
by fresh hands. Journalism opens new and broader
courts tempting for their influence, sense of power,
and the subsistence yielded. Criticism, book-making,
book-editing, are flourishing industries. Scholar's
work is steadily pursued, and carried even to analy
sis of living authors. Our poetry itself is too schol
arly. A recent happy statement concerning Byron,
that he "did not know enough," does not apply to
the typical latter-day poet. He has too much learn
ing withal, of a technical, linguistic, treasure-hunting
sort.
The over - intellectuality and scholarship of
many lyrists absorb them in curious studies, and
deaden their impulse toward original and glowing ef
forts. They revive and translate, and borrow far too
much the hoardings of all time. Even in their judg
ments they set an undue relative value upon the
learning or philosophy of a master under discussion.
Moreover, their literary skill and acquirements make
the brightest of them serviceable aids to the pub
lishers. No sooner are their names in public favor
than the great houses smooth their way along the
lucrative paths of book-making. Great and small
houses have multiplied, and printing is easy and uni
versal. To all this we indeed owe attractive series
of critico-biographical Volumes, anthologies catholic
and select, encyclopaedias, translations, and texts
without end. Good and welcome as much of this
work is, my present question must be : Does it not
479
4&o
482
483
INDEX.
IND EX.
4S8
I.XDEX.
INDEX.
Balaustion's Adventure, Browning's,
336, 338, 426.
Balder, Dobell's, 267.
Balder Dead, Arnold's, 55, 93.
Balin and Balan, Tennyson's, 420.
Ballad Romances, Home's, 249.
Ballads
420. and Other Poems, Tennyson's,
Ballads, Hood's, 76; Kingsley's, 251 ;
Buchanan's, 356; Rossetti's, 359,
364 ; strength of Tennyson's later,
420; Mrs. Pfeiffer's, 454; Gosse's
" Cruise of the Rover," 460.
Ballantine, James, 279.
Balzac, on the true mission of Art,
266.
Banim, John, 260.
Barbaric Taste, Browning's, 339.
Barham, Richard Harris, 238.
Baring-Gould, Sabine, 278.
Barlow, George, 453.
Barnard, Lady Ann, 120.
Barnes, William, 279, 440.
Barons' Wars, Drayton's, 180.
Barrett, Miss. See Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.
Barrett, Mr., father of Mrs. Browning,
116; opposes his daughter's mar
riage, 132, 133.
" Barry Cornwall." See B. W. Proc
ter.
Barton, Bernard, 235.
Baudelaire, Charles, Swinburne's me
morial to, 168, 396-398; Les Fleurs
du Mai, 396, 412.
Bayley, Thomas Haynes, 258.
Beauty, one of three kinds essential
in art, 336.
Beautiful, the, Morris an artist of,
366 et seq. ; Keats devoted to, 367.
Becket, Tennyson's, 419.
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, quoted, 20 ;
and see 2, 47, 104, 191, 237, 249.
489
Blanchard,
Blank-Verse,
362, 401. Laman,
a crucial
441.test, 45 ; Landor's, 45, 46; Tennyson's, 160-162;
Elizabethan,
idyllic, 212 ; 160
Byron's
; Miltonic,
and Swin
160 ;
Blot
"Blind,
Blessington,
Blessed
burne's,
inMathilde,
the
Damozel,
437.Countess
'Scutcheon,
457.The,"
of, Browning's,
38.
363.
49
INDEX.
INDEX.
lightful residence in Italy, 140 ; Au
rora Leigh, 136 ; reviewed, 140-142 ;
Mrs. Browning's period of decline
in health and creative power, 143,
322 ; secondary influence of her
married life, 143 ; Poems before Con
gress, 143 ; contributions to the In
dependent, 143 ; Last Poems, 144 ;
final estimate of her genius, 144149 ; her qualities as an artist, 144 ;
contrasted with Tennyson, 144, 145 ;
her over - possession, 145, incerti
tude, 145, spontaneity, 145, use of
the refrain, 145, dangerous facility,
146, lack of humor, 146, satirical
power, 146, slight idyllic tendency,
146 ; her sympathetic and religious
nature, 147 ; her personal sweet
ness, 147 ; subjective quality of her
writings, 147 ; represents her sex in
the Victorian era, 148 ; her faith in
inspiration, 148 ; her exaltation and
rapture, 148, belief in the doctrines
of Swedenborg, 148 ; her death,
149 ; poetry addressed to her by
her husband, 333 ; and see 198, 222,
315, 320, 463.
Browning, Robert, characteristics, 30 ;
first acquaintance with Miss Bar
rett, 131 ; courtship and marriage,
132 ; good and bad effects upon his
wife's style, 136, 143, 144; imitated
by Thornbury, 252 ; influence on
minor poets, 265 ; Neo-Romantic
influence, 281 ; review of his career
and writings, 293-341 ; an original,
unequal poet, 293, 338 ; birth, 293 ;
three aspects of his genius, 293 ;
analysis of his dramatic gift, 294296 ; represents the new dramatic
element, 294 ; not dramatic in the
early sense of the term, 294, 295 ;
his own personality visible in all his
491
492
I.XDEX.
reviewed, quoted, with notice of its 333, 335 ; faulty quality of many
faults and beauties, 315-319; "A lyrics, 334 ; The Xing and the Book,
Soul's Tragedy," 319 ; the poet fore
334 - 336 ; occasional likeness to
goes strictly dramatic poetry, 319;
Tennyson, 335 ; Baldustioris Adven
dramatic nature of his lyrics, 320 ;
ture, 336 ; Fijine at the Fair, 336 ;
originality in rejecting the idyllic
tendency to prosaic work, 337 ; Red
method, 320 ; founder of the new
Cotton Night -Cap Country, 337;
life-school, 320 ; more realistic than
evils of an unwise method, 337 ;
imaginative, 321 ; his genius, 321 ; Aristophanes' Apology, 338 ; final
Dramatic RomancesandLyrics, 321 ; estimate of his genius, 338-341 ; un
" My Last Duchess," 321 ; Men and conventional spirit of his verse,
Women, and Dramatis Persona, 338; a true fellow-craftsman, 339;
321-329 ; inferiority of the last- rich, yet barbaric, taste, 339 ; does
named volume, 322 ; excellence of not perfect his ideal, 339 ; results of
his lawlessness, 340 ; feeling engen
the former, 322 ; thrilling dramatic
dered by his recent work, 340 ; mi
studies, 322 ; mediaeval themes, 322 ;
" Andrea del Sarto," " Fra Lippo nute dramatic insight, 340 ; is his
Lippi," etc, 322, 323; facility of the " poetry of the future " ? 341 ;
diction, 324 ; " Christmas Eve " and opinions as to his ultimate rank as
a poet, 341 ; his style and Swin
" Easter Day," 324 ; excellent me
diaeval church studies, 324, 352 ; burne's compared, 382; his recent
their truth and subtilty, 324 ; " The leadership, 416; longevity, 417 ; optunism, 422, 433 ; The Inn Album,
Heretic's Tragedy," etc., 325 ; stud
ies upon themes taken from the 425 ; Pacchiarotto, 425 ; Agamem
non, 426 ; La Saisiaz, etc., 426 ;
first century, 325, 326 ; " Cleon,"
Dramatic Idyls, 426 ; Jocoseria,
" A Death in the Desert," etc., 326 ;
defect of these pieces, 327 ; his sub
427 ; Ferishtah's Fancies, 427 ; Par428 ; increase
etc, 427 of; his
popularity,
use of Rhyme,
429tilty of intellect, 327 ; " Caliban," leyings,
" Bishop Blougram," etc., 327, 328 ;
occasional lyrics, 328, imitated by 431 ; the Browning Societies, 430,
younger poets, 328, their beauty, 431 ; his introspective gift, 431-433 ;
328, landscape, 328, and suggestive- compared with Tennyson, and their
differing relations to the Period,
ness, 329 ; moral of this poet's emo
433 ; and see 38, 47, 57, 62, 167, 168,
tional and erotic verse, 329, 330 ;
187, 249, 256. 257. 29. 291, 352- 384.
rationalistic freedom, 329 ; admired
386, 402, 413, 420, 421, 440, 441, 450,
by those who reject Swinburne, 330 ;
451, 465, 469, 476.
subjective undertone of his " Dra
matic Lyrics," 330 ; " In a Balcony," Brownings, the two, 2 ; friendship with
331 ; teaches respect for passional Landor, 38 ; effect on each other's
style, 303and
; and
Rossetti,
see 333,
leaders
344. of the
instincts, 332 ; " The Statue and the Browning
Bust," 332 ; perfect union with his
wife, 333 ; poetry addressed to her, new romantic school, 6.
INDEX.
Bryant, William Cullen, translator of
Homer, 276 ; pastorals, 349 ; and
see American Poets.
Buchanan, Robert, 264 ; his antago
nistic position, 345 ; birth, 346 ; po
etic temperament, 346 ; represents
the Scottish element, 346 ; religious
aspiration, 346; transcendentalism,
347 ; library edition of his works,
347 ; how far a pupil of Words
worth, and the Lake School, 347 ;
inequality, 347 ; purpose and orig
inality, 348 ; lack of restraint, 348 ;
Undertones, 348 ; classicism, 348 ;
Idyls and Legends of Inverburn,
348-350 ; his fidelity to Nature, 349 ;
pastoral verse, 349, 350 ; NorthCoast poems, 350; London Poems,
350, 351 ; " The Scairth o' Bartle,"
352 ; humorous verse, etc., 352 ; The
Book of Orm, 352-354; its mysti
cism, faults, and beauties, 353, 354 ;
Napoleon Fallen, 354 ; The Drama
of Kings, 354 ; reformatory work,
355 ; St. Abe, 355 ; White Rose and
Red, 355 ; his prose writings, 355 ;
stage-plays, 355 ; faults of judgment
and style, 355, 356 ; " The Ballad
of Judas Iscariot," 356; "Coruisken Sonnets," 356 ; estimate of his
genius and prospects, 356 ; " The
Lights of Leith," 445 ; as a play
wright, 446.
Buddhism, 450.
" Bugle-Song," Tennyson's, 102.
Bulwers, the two, 268 ; and see Ed
ward, Lord Lytton, and Robert, Lord
Lytton.
Bunyan, 176.
Burbidge, Thomas, 243.
Burlesque, 272, 273.
Burns, 3, 22, 40, 219, 240, 415.
Byron, sentiment of his school, 4, 41 2 ;
493
494
INDEX.
INDEX.
Crabbe, 162.
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock, 254.
Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 275.
Crayon Verse. See Painting.
Creative Faculty, wanting in certain
ambitious poets, 477.
Criticism, its province, 4; Landor's
powers of, 64 ; comparative, its use
and abuse, 72 ; Arnold's, 99; poets
as critics of poetry, 99; Tennyson
and his critics, 151-153; verbal,
239; defects of recent, 286; Swin
burne and his critics, 390, 391 ;
Swinburne's critical genius and es
says, 401-404, 438 ; duty of the crit
ic, 411, 414; Austin's Poetry of the
Period, 450; as an industry, 479;
and see 480.
Croly, George, 235.
Cromwellian Period, 28, 115.
Cross, Mrs. See M. E. Lewes.
Cruikshank, George, 85.
" Cults," Shelley, Browning, etc., 430,
431 ; Art for beauty's sake, 477.
Culture, effect upon spontaneity, 3;
on creative art, 23, 406; the recent
period of, 23 ; over-restraint, 24 ;
breeding, 24; school of culture, 90;
good effect in case of Mrs. Brown
ing, 120; over-training, 248; criti
cism and scholarship, 343 ; poetry
for cultured people, 398 ; Symonds,
447 ; Miss Robinson, 463 ; Lang,
475; and see Over-culture, Univer
sity School, etc.
Cunningham, Allan, 235.
"Cup, The," Tennyson's, 418.
" Cyclops," imitated by Tennyson,
228.
495
Darley,
his melody,
George,365.2, 47, 191, 236, 249;
Darwin, Charles, 20.
Davis, Thomas, 260.
Dawson, W. J., 465.
Death of Marlowe, Home's, 248.
Death's Jest-Booh, Beddoes', 237.
Debonair Poets. See Society Verse.
Decoration,
289.
and Construction, 286,
IXDEX.
496
S0L3S3Disraeli, Isaac, 51.
Dithyrambic Verse
INDEX.
Dublin Newspaper Press, 260.
Dublin University Magazine, 255.
Dufferin, Lady, 260.
Duffy, Charles Gavan, 260.
Dunciad, The, 186.
Diirer, Albert, 362, 456.
Dutt, Toru.
Early Italian Poets, translations
Early
Earthly
Earnestness,
by Rossetti,
promise,
Paradise,
Rossetti's,
276,
menMorris's,
360.
of, 256.
362. reviewed,
497
Elliott, Charlotte,
Emerson,
Ebenezer,
Ralph Waldo,
83,
278.235.37, 112, 179;
Essay on " The Poet," 27 ; on tra
dition and invention, 164; on imi
tation and originality, 232; his
method, 301 ; and see 417, 442, 447,
Emotion,
457, and new
American
school
Poets.
of, 297 ; in
Browning's verse, 329 ; a source of
English
strength,
Idyls,
333.Tennyson's, 162; how
far modelled on Theocritus, 217-
English
219. landscape, etc. See Descrip
live Faculty.
English Language, adapted for trans
English
lation of
Songs,
the Greek,
Procter's,
275. 109 ; re
viewed, 109-113; their virile qual
ity, m; convivial, 111; delicacy
Enoch
and pathos,
Arden, 112;
Tennyson's,
great variety,
177, 181,
112.
Erectheus,
Essay
Erotic
Esoteric
Epic
Euripides,
189.ofon
Verse,
Hades,
Quality,
Mind,
Swinburne's,
348Swinburne's,
; The,
Miss
translated
463.L.Barrett's,
Morris's,
434.by
395.Brown
116.
452.
by Alford, 242.
Execution, 383.
Expression, the aim of recent poetry,
13 ; of Tennyson's early works,
1 56 ; greater than invention among
the minor poets, 287 ; the poet's
special office, 298 ; the flower of
thought, 301 ; brilliant quality of
498
INDEX.
INDEX.
Garibaldi, 64, 400.
Garnett, Richard, 444.
Garrulity, Browning's, 306, 324.
Gautier, Theophile, Memorial to, 398.
Gay, John, 232.
Gebir, Landor's, 39, 40, 68.
Gebirus, Latin version of the forego
ing, 4iGenius, its independence, 1 ; needs
appreciation, 68 ; unconscious train
ing of, 118; certain men of, unsuited to their period, 236, 249 ; pe
culiarity of Browning's, 293, 432434 ; distinguished from talent, 321;
Rossetti a man of, 359 ; genius to
be judged at its best, 411 ; freedom
of, 412; vitality of works of, 441 ;
J. Thomson's, 455.
Gentleman's Magazine, 48.
" George Eliot." See Marian Evans
Lewes.
Georgian Period, 34, 115; contrasted
with the Victorian, 196; revival of
poetry in, 240, 241 ; sentiment and
passion of, 412; and see 464, 481,
Byron, Keats, Scott, Shelley, etc.
Gesta Romanorum, 372.
Gifford, William, 286.
Gilbert, W. S., Original Plays, etc.,
472.
Gilfillan, Robert, 259.
"Giovanna
Godiva,"ofcompared
Naples, Landor's,
to " Hylas,"
42. 211,
499
500
INDEX.
INDEX.
50I
INDEX.
"Lady Geraldine's Courtship,"
Mrs. Browning's, 130, 315.
La Farge, John, 362.
La Fontaine, 61.
Lake School, 242, 347, 390, 412.
Lamb, Charles, 37, 51, 103.
Lancashire Songs, Waugh's, 279.
Landon, Miss, 120, 237.
Landor, Robert, 57.
Landor, Walter Savage, illustrating
growth of the art-school, 5 ; quoted,
1 5 ; review of life and writings, 3381 ; a pioneer of the Victorian
School, 33 ; birth, 34 ; prolonged
career, 34 ; retention of power, 3436 ; sustained equality, 36 ; univer
sality, 36 ; prose and poetry, 37 ; de
ficient in sympathy, 37 ; friends, 37,
38 ; early rhymed productions, 39 ;
Poems, English and Latin, 39 ; a
Moral Epistle, 39 ; Gebir, 40 ; mis
cellaneous pieces, 41 ; dramatic gen
ius and work, 41-42, 47, 48 ; Count
Julian, 41 ; the Trilogy, 42 ; the
Hellenics, 42-44 ; Idyllia Heroica,
43 ; Poemata et Inscriptiones, 43 ;
Latin verse, 43, 45, 62 ; qualities as
an artist, 44-47 ; blank-verse, 45 ;
lyrical affluence, 46 ; restrictions, 48,
49 ; lack of theme, 49 ; great as a
writer of English prose, 49 ; Imag
inary Conversations, 50 ; Citation of
Shakespeare, 51 ; the Pentameron,
51 ; Pericles and Aspasia, 52-54 ;
personal history and character con
sidered, 54-71; temperament, 55,
56 ; extraordinary disposition and
career, 55; physical gifts, 56; inde
pendence, 56, 57 ; vivacity, 57 ; por
trait by Dickens, 57 ; an amateur,
58 ; but not a dilettant, 59 ; his love
of nature, 60 ; biography by Forster,
60 ; affection for animals, 61 ; clas
503
Last
69. Poems, Mrs. Browning's, 144.
Latest Schools, 281 ; decoration a
main end of, 286.
Latin Hymns, 277.
Latin Idyls, Landor's, translated, 69.
Latin Students' Songs, Symonds's
Wine, Women, and Song, 449.
Latin Verse. See Greek and Latin
Latter-Day
Verses. Poets. See Chapters X.
and XI. ; their position and embar-
54
INDEX.
INDEX.
SOS
"Marvell,
Mary Arden,"
Andrew,E.28.Mackay's, 461.
506
I.XDEX.
INDEX.
and American poets contrasted,
290 ; freshness and individuality of
the latter, 290; meaning of the re
cent aspect, 291 ; reflex influence of
America upon the motherland, 291 ;
the future, 292 ; great number of the
minor Victorian poets, 286, 344;
necrology, 439, 442 ; a prolific con
tingent, 447-454 ; a look round the
latest field, 458-475; recent lack of
assumption, 458; scenic tendency,
465 ; university school, 462, etc. ;
aesthetic group, 467 ; colonial, etc.,
468-470; society - verse, 473-475;
want of national tone, 480-482.
Miscellanies, Swinburne's, 438.
Miss Kilmansegg, Hood's, 79, 80, 84,
85.
Mitford,
Miss
236. Barrett,
John,
Mary 242.
Russell,
123; dramas,
portraitetc.,
of
Mixed
Moir,
Moliere,
Monastic
David
School,
298.
Studies,
Macbeth,
319. Browning's,
255.
324,
507
5o8
INDEX.
Napoleon
" NapoleonFallen,
III. inBuchanan's,
Italy," Mrs.347,
Brown
354. A'ote on Charlotte Bronte, A, Swin
burne's, 438.
ing's, 143.
Notes on Poems and Reviews, Swin
burne's, 39a
Narrative Verse, Morris a master of,
Novel, The, supplying the place of
37. 372Nation,
Natural
Nature, Landor's
The (Dublin),
method,
inlove
Art,
of,
260.
38.
60 ; Buchan
the drama, 25, 47, 295.
Novelist-Poets, Kingsley and Thack
eray, 251 ; inferior names, 253-255 ;
Meredith, 447.
an's, 349 ; Swinburne's slight regard
"Necrology,
Neale,
Neil,
for, 401.
John
Ross,"
ofMason,
472.
twelve277.
years, 439-442. Novels in Verse, 453.
Novel-Writing, diversion to, 479.
Neo-Romantic School, 6, 281-286 ; led
by Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne,
281 ; French Romanticism, 284 ;
carried to an extreme by Marzials,
284, 285 ; relative positions of the
leaders, 361, 378 ; Lang's Ballads of
Old France, 475 ; its French min
strelsy an exotic, 477 ; and see 393,
413, 416, 440, 445, also Romanti
Nesbit,
Neukomm,
New
cism.Departure,
E., 464.
Chevalier,
a change
108. from the
"New
Newman,
New
idyllic
Monthly
Princeton
method,
Francis
John
Magazine,
Henry,
Review,
342.
William,
245,
82.
The,"
275.
278. quot
ed, 481.
Nihelungen-Lied, 372.
Non-Creative
Noel,
Nicoll,
Nichol,Roden,
Robert,
John, 270,
255.
Period,
261.446.from Milton to Originality,
consisting,Tennyson's,
297 ; Browning's,
232 ; in what
293,
297. 32. 338. 341 ; Buchanan's, 348.
Original Plays, Gilbert's, 472.
North-Coast
Norse
Cowper,
Literature,
21,Poems,
22. 374.Buchanan's, 350, Orion, Home's, 249.
Orphic
and Buchanan,
utterances,347,
of the
354.Lake School
"Othello,"
O'Shaughnessy,
440.
310. Arthur W. E., 284,
Norton,
35'- Caroline Elizabeth Sarah,
120, 237.
INDEX.
Over-Culture, Arnold's reaction from,
97 ; evils of, 124.
Over-Possession, 145, 298.
Over-Production, dangers of the liter
ary market, 470.
" Owen Meredith." See Robert, Lord
Lytton.
Oxford Group, 463. See University
School.
Peel,
43-Sir Robert, 89.
Peerage, the, Tennyson and, 422-424.
Pendennis, Thackeray's, 142.
Pentameron, Landor's, 48, 51.
Pacchiarotto, Browning's, 425.
Pericles and Aspasia, Landor's, 38,
Painting, its recent services to poetry,
51. 54358 ; the Pre - Raphaelite method, Persian Quatrain, 283.
358 ; Rossetti's drawings, etc., 359 ; "Pessimism,
Peter Pindar,"
422 ; 238.
J. Thomson, 456.
Crayon Verse, etc., 465.
Palgrave, Francis Turner, 245-248; re Petrarch, II.
semblance to Arnold, 245 ; his Reign Petty, Sir William, his declaration of
of Law, 245, 247 ; his attitude, 247 ; faith, 192.
hymns, 278 ; and see 444.
Pfeiffer, Emily, 453, 454.
Parables, Hake's, 282.
Philanthropy, Hood's and Dickens's,
Paracelsus, Browning's, 305-308 ; ana
83, 84; Arnold's, 91 ; Mrs. Brown
lytic power, 305 ; compared with ing's, 129.
Faust, 305 ; merits and defects, 306 ; Philip Van Artevelde, Taylor's, 237.
garrulity, 306 ; fine diction, 306, 307 ; Philips, Ambrose, 232.
Philistinism, its defence and arraign
blank-verse, 307 ; meaning, 307.
Paradise Lost, 161, 175, 180, 184; its ment, 328 ; false distinction between
Browning and Swinburne, 330.
theology, 353.
Phihctetes, Warren, 283.
Parleyings, etc., Browning's, 427.
Philology, Landor's, 65.
Parody, 272, 273, 304.
Phocceans, Landor's, 41.
Parr, Samuel, 37.
Parsons,
of Dante,"
Thomas,
364. lines " On a Bust Piano-music, a term applied to recent
verse, 191.
Pindar, 60, 204, 205.
Pascal, Blaise, 147.
Passion, two kinds, 91 ; Pippa Passes, Pippa Passes, Browning's, 306, 313,
315-319; his most simple and beau
316; moral of Browning's, 332; en
nobling to Art, 333 ; Tennyson's in
tiful drama, 315; scene between Ottima and Sebald, 316-318; too intel
crease of, 416, 420; Rossetti's son
nets, 439 ; recent lack of, 482.
lectual and subjective, 318 ; a work
of pure art, 319 ; its faults and beau
Pastoral Verse, of Wordsworth, Bry
ant, and Buchanan, 349; Munby's, ties, 319; quoted, 339.
Plagiarism, 210, 211.
" Pathetic
454Fallacy," the, 445.
Plato, 14, 119, 303; Landor's opinion,
70; description of a poet, 149.
Patmore, Coventry, 266, 367, 446.
INDEX.
Play, Form of the, its advantages for
a masterpiece, 295.
Playwrights, 295 ; Buchanan, 445 ; and
see 471, 472.
Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,
Hood's, 75.
Pleiade, the French, 474.
Plumptre, Edward Hayes, 246.
Poe, Edgar Allan, Sonnet to Science,
8; indebted to Procter, 106; esti
mate of Tennyson, 154, 210; Thom
son's likeness to, 455, 456; and see
Americati Poets.
Poemata et Inscriptions, Landor's,
43Poems, Tennyson's volume of 1832,
158, 210; of 1842, 160.
Poems and Ballads, Swinburne's, 389396 ; criticism evoked by this book,
390 ; the poet's rejoinder, 390 ; re
printed in America, 390 ; a collec
tion of early poems, 391, 392; me
diaeval studies, 392 ; French, He
braic, and Italian influences, 393 ;
poetic quality, 394 ; extravagance,
395 ; novel and beautiful metres,
395 ; a suggestive volume, 396.
Poems and Ballads, 2d Series, Swin
burne's, 434.
Poems before Congress, Mrs. Brown
ing's, 143.
Poems by Two Brothers, 1 57.
Poems, chiefly Lyrical, Tennyson's,
157, 158.
Poems of Rural Life, Barnes's, 279.
Poetic Decline, Mrs. Browning's, 143.
Poetic Revival (1791-1824), 22, 240.
Poetry, compared with sister-arts, 3,
1 56 ; Poetry and Science, 8, 20 ; its
office, 16; "poetry of the future,"
21, 31, 32, 341 ; its reserved domain,
21; advance as an art, 25-27; the
lasting kind, 76 ; Arnold's theory,
INDEX.
Pre - Chaucerian Verse and Method,
179. 359. 378.
Precision of Touch, 361.
Precocity, 243.
Pre - Raphaelitism, Tennyson's, in
youth, 155, 176; Browning's, 339;
the painters of the school, 358 ; its
relation to academic art, 358 ; Rossetti's, in poetry and painting, 359 ;
Morris's, 369 ; feeling of the true
disciple, 369, 370 ; its Stained-Glass
verse, 477 ; and see 266, 300, 463.
" Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau,"
Browning's, 337.
Princess, The, Tennyson's, 164-167,
220, 225.
Prior, 473.
Procter, Adelaide Anne, 107, 254, 280.
Procter, Bryan Waller (" Barry Corn
wall "), 73 ; review of his career and
writings, 100-113; his birth, 100;
a natural vocalist, 100; genuine
quality of his songs, 101, 102 ; his
youth and early associates, 103 ; a
pioneer of the recent school, 103 ;
preface to his " Dramatic Scenes,"
103; a pupil of Leigh Hunt, 103;
restrictions upon his dramatic gen
ius, 104 ; a poet of the Renaissance,
105 ; Dramatic Scenes, etc., 105 ;
his influence upon other poets, 106 ;
Mirandola, 107 ; poems of a later
date,
107
108 ; home
English
107 ; and
hisSongs,
domestic
daughter
109-112;
happiness,
Adelaide,
their
511
512
INDEX.
INDEX.
and attitude, 357 ; influence as a
leader, 357 ; a circle called by his
name, 357; an early Pre-Raphaelite
in art and poetry, 358, 359; a man
of genius, 359; ballads, 359; Italian
parentage, 360 ; Poems, 360-365 ;
his conscientiousness, 361 ; quaintness of diction and accent, 361, of
- feeling, 362 ; a master of the NeoRomantic school, 361 ; simplicity,
and precision of touch, 361 ; terse
ness, 361 ; an earnest and spiritual
artist, 362 ; melody, 362, 365 ; light
and color, 362 ; " The Blessed Daraozel," 363; mediaeval ballads, 364;
miscellaneous poems, 364 ; a trans
lator from the old French, 364 ; lyr
ical faculty, 365 ; dramatic power,
365 ; a sonneteer, 365 ; his imagina
tion, 365 ; aspects of his poetry and
career, 365, 366 ; The House ofLife,
366, 439 ; his death, 439 ; memori
als of, 439 ; Stained-Glass poetry of
his pupils, 477 ; and see 2, 320, 386,
39'. 392, 4i3. 44i, 4S1. 463. 465- 48,
476.
Ruskin, John, on Art as a means of
Expression, 288 ; his word-painting,
288 ; on popular appreciation, 298 ;
and see 445, 463, 467.
Sacred Verse. See Hymnology.
Sand, George, 120.
Sappho, 115, 435.
Satire, 272; Browning's, 425; Courthope, 471.
Saxon English, in translating Homer,
371 ; Morris's diction, 379.
" Scairth o' Bartle," Buchanan's, 352,
Scenic
Schoell,
Science,
354- Tendency,
its
quoted,
iconoclastic
206,
465,239.
466.
stress, 7 ; bear
513
514
INDEX.
INDEX.
5 IS
5i6
INDEX.
INDEX.
1 53 ; an independent leader, 1 54 ;
Poe's opinion of him, 154 ; high
average of his poetry, 155 ; hin
drances to a correct estimate, 155;
a born artist, 155; youthful pieces,
155; their Pre - Raphaelitism, 155,
176; their charm, 156, 157; early
study of details, 1 56 ; Poems, chiefly
Lyrical, 1 57 ; Poems by Two Broth
ers, 157 ; volume of 1832, Poems,
1158-160;
58 ; an expression
sudden poetic
of the growth,
beauti
ful, 158 ; at the head of the " ArtSchool," 1 59 ; tendency of his gen
ius, and influences affecting it, 1 59 ;
Greek
1 59 ; purely
influence,
English1 59idyls,
; " CEnone,"
1 59 ; the
volume of 1842, Poems, 160-164 . a
treasury of his representative po
ems, 160 ; advance in thought and
art, 160 ; formation of his blankverse style, 160; its originality and
perfection, 161 ; epic verse of
" Morte d'Arthur," 161 ; Victorian
idyllic style of his other blank-verse
poems, 162 ; " Dora," " Godiva,"
" Ulysses," etc., 162 ; comprehen
sive range of English Idyls and
Other Poems, 162, 163 ; a composite
and influential volume, 164 ; The
Princess, 164-167 ; its group of lyr
ics, 166; isometric songs, 166; in
tellectual growth and advantage,
167 ; at his prime, 168; In Memoriam, reviewed, 168-172 ; his most
distinctive effort, 168 ; greatest of
elegiac masterpieces, 168, 169; its
metrical and stanzaic arrangement,
169; its general quality, 171; Ten
nyson made Laureate, 172 ; the
Wellington Ode, 172 ; other occa
sional pieces, 173; Maud and Other
Poems, 173, 174 ; Idyls of the King,
5i8
INDEX.
INDEX.
252 ; humorous verse, 272 ; and see
92, 142, 262, 273.
Thackeray, Miss, 337.
" Thalysia," of Theocritus, 229-231.
" Theatre Francais au Moyen Age,"
Theme,
Theism,
226. recent
Browning's,
lack of,433.
49, 287 ; choice
of, 405 ; and see Tradition.
Theocritus, Landor's paper on, 69 ;
editions of, 204, 209 ; and see 60,
273, 348, 403, and Tennyson and
Theocritus.
Theology. The divine and the poet,
13Theosophy, 450.
Theory, Arnold's poetic, 92.
Thorn, William, 261, 279.
Thomson, 265.
J., author of The City of
Dreadful Night, 455-457 i a man of
posthumous
genius, ib. ; resemblance
volume, 457to; Poe,
and ib.
see;
Thornbury,
480.
Geo. Walter, 252, 262, 440.
" Thyrsis," Arnold's, 98, 99, 168, 396.
Tibullus,Theodore,
Tilton,
224.
his sketch of Mrs.
Browning, 131, 140.
" Timbuctoo," Tennyson's, 209.
Tiresias, Tennyson's, 420.
Tone, effect of, 92.
Tradition vs. Invention, 164, 370.
Training, Arnold an example of, 91 ;
Symonds's, 447-449.
Transcendentalism, a perilous quality
in Art, 127; Home's, 249; that of
Macdonald, Buchanan, and other
North Country Poets, 264; Call,
etc., 457 ; and see 299.
Transition Periods, 14, 157, 342, 412.
Translation and Translators, recent,
273-278 ; new theory of translation,
519
>20
IXDEX.
INDEX.
521
THE END.
POETS
OF
AMERICA.
It will not be possible for any sensitive reader of the poets of America to
forget that Mr. Stedman is also a poet; but it will be equally impossible for
such a reader to regret it. The solid qualities of the book are the result of
patient, conscientious, scholarly work, which shows on almost every page ; its
finer qualities, the delicate touch of sympathy, the glow of hope, the spiritual
magnetism, are the fruit of tne poetic temperament which no amount of in
dustry can ever cultivate unless it first has the seed. The New Princeton
Review.
A true critical insight enables Mr. Stedman to deal with his subject in a
generous and a noble spirit, and yet in one that is eminently just and faithful
to fact. His critical gifts are of a kind rarely to be found in this country, and
none are more needed in our literature at the present time. Unitarian Heview.
This book should quickly become a standard wherever cultivated persons
desire an honest, sympathetic, suggestive, entertaining, and experienced guide
to the most interesting epoch of American literature. The Independent.
We are greatly indebted to Mr. Stedman for this fine example of what lit
erary criticism should be. . . . No one not himself a poet, and a poet with a
noble spirit, could have written this book. Thomas S. Hastings, D. D.,
in The Presbyterian Review.
This is the history of American poetry ; it is conceived and executed in the
grand style of literary criticism, and it does not fall below its promise. Geo.
E. Woodberry, in The Atlantic Monthly.
In his " Poets of America
FOREIGN
" Mr. Stedman
CRITICISMS.
displays the same competent skill,
honesty of purpose, and painstaking thoroughness of execution [as in his
work on " Victorian Poets ") ; and he adds to these qualities the great ad
vantage of being on his native soil. To the students of American verse his
volume is almost indispensable. . . . Every one will not agree with his con
clusions; but no one can differ from so well-informed and conscientious a
critic without self-distrust. The Quarterly Review (London).
This book, with its few and only superficial defects, and with its many solid
merits, is one which most persons of taste and culture will like to possess.
The Saturday Review (London).
Mr. Stedman deserves thanks for having devoted his profound erudition
and the high impartiality of which he is capable, to making us acquainted with
the literature of poetry as it has existed from the beginning in his country.
His important and thorough study is conducted with the method, the scrupu
lousness, the perspicacity, which he applied formerly to the work of the Vic
torian Poets. La Revue des Deux Mondes (Paris).
5:7 !